Oklahoma City Bombing:  Reflections

   “Who, if I cried out, would
hear me among the angels’ hierarchies?”

   –Rilke, “The First Duino
Elegy”

  “I can see them with their angel’s wings,”

   –A mother who
lost two children in the explosion (CNN)

         

                             l
New wounds bring old ones in their
train
Reasons sour like debts too long unpaid
We feel the bite of teeth
but see no face
Here in this place that is no
place

                             2
Mean tasks are elevated in the
blur of grief
Rubble becomes ritual without relief
If only these dead had
been nameless
We’d need not seek them
all

                              3
Their muddled futures will be
built
Of counterfactuals ringed with guilt
And banality will join with
bile
To wreathe catharsis for a while

                              
4
No one ever understands death’s dance
Antietam Iwo Jima Ardennes Viet
Nam
Grow younger as we die with them
What color is the enemy whose enemy
are we

                                5
We survive as conscripts of
remembrance
For knowing is accomplice to the crime
Old wounds spawn new
ones in their line
The unthinkable keeps ticking all the
time

                                 6
Let the children have their
wings
Poor dead tiny blameless things
Why not place them near the
angels:
Who will hear them if they weep

4/19-5/24, 12/2/95,
2/2-2/9/98, 3/1/98

Copyright 1995, 1998 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.