Famous Reporter 27 (June, 2003): Angela Gardner - poetry

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Angela Gardner

 

    Embedded

 

The Americans storm their mile yield

 

They have come not to make

 

but to give the gross formation

of his terrible goods

 

his overwhelming economy

 

It is the cause of victory

against adversaries of every kind

 

This is the time of the migration of birds

to the marshlands

 

Ahead there are new formations incoming

Divine justice spurs them

 

Aircraft strike one to one

the signal air without stars

 

wings in cold time to wide and full formation

 

The city is already gone

abandoned to pain and rubble

 

You will see behind

the long draft of those who have lost everything

 

people between exile and displacement

those who have left every hope

 

They are dust

each alone nearby the others

 

They come drawing troubles

from the almost dead

 

and more than a thousand shadowed monsters

or monstrosities unnamed

 

Those who cannot be consoled

now the no longer gentle sky rains

 

Who is it that can hear

this sad chorus of harsh languages?

 

Those that had reasoned this commotion?

 

I have heard in the heard sky

his adorned word

 

and the President saying gentle and flat

with his slow voice

 

I have your word your very understanding

Let me finish my Father’s work

 

This is a man ennobled though without high talent

 

thinking himself heir

of an empire that owns the empyrean sky

 

Satellite images

lay out the whole planet before him

 

as from a high mountain

 

Geophysical features

the movement of troops

 

supply lines

words in typeface upon a page

 

The ire of God continues

over video reportage

 

Again they come to the ancient place

without understanding

 

such that another’s misery may not touch them

 

It will visit us by proxy

 

television faithfully imitating every cruel movement

until we also are removed from you

 

The Oil Ministry guarded as the library burns

and the museum looted of seven thousand years

 

Who will hear?

 

Those embedded -

fixed firmly in the solid mass of the army?

 

We are given reportage fixed in a viewpoint

It says from within the machine itself

 

‘this is what you shall see’

 

implies being on side

remaining on side

 

So your assigned commander

has brought me also

 

to this dark place

 

where headlines and truth meet only in irony

a bloodied mess in my hands

 

Freedom

becomes a mob stoning a suspect

or white goods shouldered through broken windows

 

Hope

a badly burnt child with both arms amputated

 

We touch the world of blood

a dark coast where thinking is consumed

 

- perverse in ways that still offend

 

So we descend this time

through approximated light

to view not representation but storage

 

Certain things may need explanation

photo credits map references silences

 

whatever

the glyphs as they appear are lost to language

hung from ropes in the darkness

 

Some recognized saw and knew the shadow

that is contrived to generate and preserve blame

 

Saw the tired virtue as an excuse

that arranged the President’s words

 

Ramps that curve gently down

to suffocating depths

 

to fumes and heat

 

where locksmiths and metal workers generate objects

that speak

 

Clearly we are not machines

 

but inescapably a form of speech

consigned now to indebtedness