Classic Poem

Lately, in Cambodia, they tear the children apart
What Solomon only threatened, they make real.
One soldier grabs an arm,
another a leg.

Meanwhile, in Czechoslovakia,
the children are prevented from living with their parents, refugees.
Reunification of this family is " in contradiction with the interests of the socialist state. "

In Russia, little girls wear white bows in their hair;
gauze butterflies perch on their blonde or brunette curls.
If their parents object to the lack of civil liberty, or, say, simply to the sudden disappearance of a dear friend,
the little girls pay for their fathers' " sins. "
(And the fathers pay also, and the mothers.)
The little girls are pinned to their places like butterflies in glass cases.

Then again, according to eyewitnesses,
Lieutenant Calley tore an infant from the arms of a Buddhist priest,
tossing it into the air like a clay pigeon,
and shot it forever dead with his army-issue M-16.

None of this is poetry; it is fact.
And not only fact, but act.
And not only act, but raw fat and warm blood, hope expiring
like breath, and shadow
beating a menacing tattoo on the wall of the house in a high wind, like an overgrown bush,