War Poems by Michael Burch

SURVIVORS
 
In truth, we do not feel the horror
of the survivors,
but what passes for horror:
 
a shiver of “empathy”.
 
We too are “survivors”,
if to survive is to snap back
from the sight of death
 
like a turtle retracting its neck.
 

VEILED 
 
She has belief
without comprehension
and in her crutch work shack
she is
much like us ...
 
tamping the bread
into edible forms,
regarding her children
at play
with something akin to relief ...                                 
 
ignoring the towers ablaze
in the distance
because they are not revelations
but things of glass,
easily shattered ...
 
and if you were to ask her,
she might say—
sometimes God visits his wrath
upon an impious nation
for its leaders’ sins,
 
and we might agree:
seeing her mutilations.
 
SALVE
 
The world is unsalvageable ...                                              
 
but as we lie here
in bed
stricken to the heart by love
despite war’s 
flickering images,
 
sometimes we still touch,
 
laughing, amazed,
that our flesh 
does not despair 
of love        
as we do,
 
that our bodies are wise
 
in ways we refuse 
to comprehend,
still insisting we eat, 
drink ...
even multiply.
 
And so we touch ...
 
touch, and only imagine
ourselves immune:
two among billions
 
in this night of wished-on stars, 
 
caresses,
kisses,
and condolences.
 
We are not lovers of irony,
 
we
who imagine ourselves 
beyond the redemption 
of tears
because we have salvaged 
so few 
for ourselves ...
 
and so we laugh 
at our predicament,
fumbling for the ointment.
 

Michael R. Burch’s poems have been published by hundreds of literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into fourteen languages, incorporated into three plays and two operas, and set to music by seventeen composers.

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