Atrocities

"Raging tempo….Wild….
Beauty of tone secondary"
(a movement notation in
Hindemith’s Solo Viola
Sonata-Op 25 #l l922)

Atrocities unfolding
in Sunday’s Times
browsed at breakfast
late in July
my walls intact
water ready at the tap
silence broken only by pets
pavement unbroken where people pass

I crunch my Grape Nuts
to Hindemith riffs
the viola massaging
my abstract fear

Tonight a film
on prosthetic devices
shows an armless Croatian
not twenty-one
patiently learning
the prosthete’s trade
courtesy of a hand grenade
it’s meant to uplift us
to see him so brave
I deem it correct to doubt

I write    my hand steady
then head for the john
where I piss exactly
guiding the stream
flush matter-of-factly
soap my hands clean
scratch my scalp deftly
continue my scheme

(If I walked out
on the streets of Sarajevo
would anyone care
if mortar or fragment
parted my hair
would they report it
or look for me there)

Here in my outpost
on top of the world
my dinner digested
I breath the cool air
away from the raging
safe from the wild
I try to imagine
their fate as my share

I cannot imagine
their fate as my share

7/23-7/25/95, 1/26/98

Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.