Of Cherry Blossom and Ashes or The Morning After in Baghdad

Catholic New Times, April 20, 2003 by Jean Stokan

Of Cherry Blossom and Ashes
or The Morning After in Baghdad

   I wonder what this morning is like in Baghdad
   Are fires smoldering?
   Is there a scent of burning flesh? Or lust ashes,
   Is there walling and heaving of mothers in mourning?
   Or screams of children in pain

   Is them shrapnel protruding through their chests?

   Here people am laughing, milling around
   Debating when cherry blossoms will roach their peak.
   Tourism, spending, markets of patriotic importance.

   Of importance to me, another market

   A bomb falls, a mother and three children incinerated in a car,
   dozens others.

   Did some twin tower fall
   To crush the innocent?

   Did they get enough of them to feel revenged
   justified, satisfied now?

   Are they lusting to climb the bodies and plant an American flag
   I don't think it will stand
   In ashes.
   Missiles, fireworks in the sky
   Make such sport.

   But in Arab countries                                            '
   Every TV showed Baghdad burning
   Spontaneous and fierce protests rose up
   Fuel for extremists vowing revenge, suicide bombers signing up by
   the thousands.

   I don't think we am going to be laughing much longer
   I don't think Cherry Blossom season has a big future.
   Maybe that's best.

   It might take morn ashes here
   To understand ashes there
   More sacrificial lambs.

   I can't go to frolic in the cherry blossoms this year, too much
   baggage there.
   But I thank God for the forsythias.
   Who defy my desperation.
   I keep wondering about Baghdad this morning
   And try to come back to hope.

Jean Stokan, Policy Director Pax Christi USA Washington, D.C. Office