speak ill of the dead

They are the exalted birds and their intercession is required indeed
—Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

the Blitz by May 1941.......43,000 civilians
many of them horribly
as cellars filled with sewage escaping
from burst heads that lay with the corn
dollies of Dresden whose skin grew vapid
as tubers of fire and wind whose horses
were silhouettes capering on sidewalks
of armour and ashen ghosts whose Pompeiis
cooked down like stock unstuck in time
and there in the rising of the Thames
and the Elbe the horses at night
that came to feed on the shadows
.......................................of the dead

.....................that a three year old child
............................................in Gaza City
who dies with a broken back (of rivers that run hard
......................into deltas far as though that only)
..............over two days in the rising of the Thames in shattered concrete
.....................and heat her mouth (with petals and song)
.....................filled only with dust (on the banks white & green
............folds aloft in the arms of mothers and the history
............of mothers and the mothers of mothers and of the baking of bread at dawn
.....................................and at the going down of the sun will we consume thee)

...........................................knows or cares anything (thy flesh now bread
.....................the glory (white phosphorus coins they inserted in the loaves)(of Intifada
......its cosmic [for the raising of the drowned from rivers](of history)
......dimension

............ [like vast catfish rising dark]at the going down
......................................her own eternal place (the drowned in dust)
.................co-opted face-down—be still and do not fight (as the horses that fed
...........it will be over the sooner—into that glory thrust (upon shadow
..........................................aloft exalted and on high and in the upper air and on the heights

...............in cannonades and loaves at dawn they seek the drowned

.............why one child//whose skin grew vapid
...........of another race//as tubers of fire
...........worth so many of hers just/unable to move her arms
..........................................................
.........................she will never know of snow)(and one Catfish King
...................................nor feel in her mouth)(says Jim to Tom is much
.............................................. in its taste )(like another and all of them
........................................of cold soft iron )(no damn good

......................with little arms of Elbes on the riverbank (by the mark thrice
.....................little face-down snow angel there for the baking and the history
(and for the leavening—feathers and bitumen for the mouths—

.........of those drowned)( all unknowing)( in dry rivers of glory)

reprise

.
.
(A cleave version of this poem was published in The Cleave in February 2009)