I
Who brings forth the living from the dead,
and the dead from the living?
—QUR’AN, 10:30
The Baghdad Zoo
Is the world safer? No. It’s not safer in Iraq.
—HANS BLIX
An Iraqi northern brown bear mauled a man
on a street corner, dragging him down an alley
as shocked onlookers shouted and threw stones.
Tanks rolled their heavy tracks
past the museum and up to the Ministry of Oil.
A gunner watched a lion chase down a horse.
Eaten down to their skeletons, the giraffes
looked prehistoric, unreal, their necks
too fragile, too graceful for the 21st Century.
Dalmatian pelicans and marbled teals
flew over, frightened by the rotorwash
of Blackhawk helicopters touching down.
One baboon escaped the city limits.
It was found wandering in the desert, confused
by the wind, the blowing sands of the barchan dunes.
Hwy 1
I see a horizon lit with blood,
And many a starless night.
A generation comes and another goes
And the fire keeps burning.
—AL-JAWAHIRI
It begins with the Highway of Death,
with an untold number of ghosts
wandering the road at night, searching
for the way home, to Najaf, Kirkuk,
Mosul and Kanni al Saad. It begins here
with a shuffling of feet on the long road north.
This is the spice road of old, the caravan trail
of camel dust and heat, where Egyptian limes
and sultani lemons swayed in crates
strapped down by leather, where merchants
traded privet flowers and musk, aloes,
honeycombs and silk brought from the Orient.
Past Marsh Arabs and the Euphrates wheel,
past wild camels and waving children
who marvel at the painted guns, the convoy
pushes on, past the ruins of Babylon and Sumer,
through the land of Gilgamesh where the minarets
sound the muezzin’s prayer, resonant and deep.
Cranes roost atop power lines in enormous
bowl-shaped nests of sticks and twigs,
and when a sergeant shoots one from the highway
it pauses, as if amazed that death has found it
here, at 7 A.M. on such a beautiful morning,
before pitching over the side and falling
in a slow unraveling of feathers and wings.
In the Leupold Scope
With a 40X60mm spotting scope
I traverse the Halabjah skyline,
scanning rooftops two thousand meters out
to find a woman in sparkling green, standing
among antennas and satellite dishes,
hanging laundry on an invisible line.
She is dressing the dead, clothing them
as they wait in silence, the pigeons circling
as fumestacks billow a noxious black smoke.
She is welcoming them back to the dry earth,
giving them dresses in tangerine and teal,
woven cotton shirts dyed blue.
She waits for them to lean forward
into the breeze, for the wind’s breath
to return the bodies they once had,
women with bre...