Poem for Poets Who Resist War

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Two poets have been imprisoned in Russia for reading poems against war in Ukraine.

            Hooded crows are probing luminous gardens full of the storm.

A spring tide has ripped out of Bantry Harbour exposing winter mudflats —

there had been some flooding — and two people are digging for lugworms.

There is a prismatic glister of oil, an iridescence of unearthly behaviours.

All of this is tragic. All of this is connected. All of this aligns, though it might

not seem obvious. In the violent interstices. Mud and haemoglobin.

Standing outside the perspiring window and not looking back through its glass.

            Hooded crows are probing luminous gardens full of the storm.

Two poets have been imprisoned in Russia for reading poems against war in Ukraine.

 

 

            John Kinsella

Against War and War Propaganda in its Myriad Forms

Euphoric Hero Dysphoria

 

Each hero latched onto

in order to manufacture

more heroes, to pick up

more arms supplied by

‘allies’ whose industries

of arms and related items

(‘supplies ‘) make a killing

justified by the economic

trickle-down effect so bills

can be paid and consumer

items purchased as if good

conscience had anything

to do with that euphoric

hero dysphoria a president

or high command would urge

on would embody as bodies

on streets in trenches by churches

and where trees or even fields

of wheat grew as the seasons

still managed to function

until recently, until metaphors

once again fell into line,

rushed to serve death.

 

            John Kinsella