Baghdad April

Military Review, Nov-Dec, 2006 by Steven Metz

BAGHDAD APRIL

   Who would have thought even minutes ago
   Black Hawk swept from the taupe
   Medieval California Kuwait to the quivering sandust of Talil
   Sweat, Al-Hilah, Marine bird, older than damp crew, machine
   Smell, vibration ammo cammo scraped paint web belts, still
   Tighten gray roar and chaos, nose down, brown. Just get us there.

   Now green. For ten thousand lives this river ran brown with blood
   Helping reeds limber bodies once passed as blind. Just get us there.

   Down, then BIAP, destruction for glory
   Spurts and unthinking tremors, the shakti of nonduality,
   Bills unpaid as crushed planes kneel lame,
   Torn tarmac shattered with dust
   Fade, then the comic book cantos: a prince of
   Babylon, sword of Assyria, builder of Ur, heavens perturbed,
   Trauma hung close in crumbled glass, a facade (yet more)
   Meaning deep to those who looted that brief cosmic day
   Missed by those who watched.

   Stories, reprise, thunder run
   Endless dust nights of expendable men
     blind (they must have been)
   To spin a rusty truck against a tank
   With only, what? passion? hate?
     fear?
   Perhaps no thought at all
   Except to hope the engine would start (or not)
     and no one else would see.
   No matter. They are now mist, counters in a game.

   We hurry, are watched, relief, no love and
   Bomblets are toys, slipping through dry canals with a last black
   smoke to please a small hand as
   Green towers turn red, mating in the night.
   Somehow we must have known (even a
   first summer wind will dry the eye). Yet
   Rank on file is an army of shrouds, mist,
   And hot days turn gray, crafting wry smiles.
   Then fade. Finally,

      to destroy and build, Shiva in web gear
   While somewhere a bridge is lost. But what?
   Who is destroyer, who a builder? We know
   Often great power is only owning the detritus.
   Still there is BIAP, flight out, home, strong shoulders and
   Hiphop, path to insanity and relief.
   And then, a tiny point of blood receding on the glass.

--Dr. Steven Metz
U.S. Army War College