Then…

Yesterday was blood-made

a weary endlessness
of waiting and waiting,
barricades and wanting,
fear and exasperation
bandaged humanity
wandering from check-point
to check-point,
helplessness to give up,
government to government
and the war raged on
with assertion and disavowal;
yesterday was bullet-made
grenade-made,
dusted with gunpowder
and enveloped in smoke;
yesterday is forgettable
but unforgotten,
for wreckage ruptured
memory and livability
and a nation gasped
from breath to breath
desperate,
disenfranchised
lost.

[Also published in 'The Nation', UNDO Section, May 20, 2012]

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