Casualties of War

A Task

. by Czeslaw Milosz


In fear and trembling, I think I would fulfill my life

Only if I brought myself to make a public confession

Revealing a sham, my own and of my epoch:


We were permitted to shriek in the tongue of dwarfs and demons

But pure and generous words were forbidden

Under so stiff a penalty that whoever dared to pronounce one


Considered himself as a lost man.






.





This photograph says it all.
Osama lives, our young men and women die and suffer, Iraqis die and suffer.

Bushist fascism and the arrogant, Oedipal, sanctimonious hubris that fuels it continue to bring our country to its knees, leaving us fiscally bankrupt and morally bankrupt.


No one pays for these crimes.

So far.







I'm going on retreat for a while.

See you later.

Iraq War
Dirty Bush
Photograph by Nina Berman, from her excellent book, "Purple Hearts." I think this photo will become an emblematic photo of Bubble Boy's horrid Oedipal war. (Another was the Abu Ghraib hooded black figure with wires attached to his hands.)