I suppose there was looting in 331 B. C.
\nwhen Alexander the Great “liberated” Babylon.
\nThey are at it again, but Rumsfeld reminds us
\nthat war is not “tidy,”
\nas if we thought it were,
\nand reassures us that reports
\nof looting in Baghdad
\nare exaggerated.
\nThe National Museum has been emptied
\nand elsewhere they have made off with
\ncomputers, a horse, a bus
\nand Omar’s welding tools,
\nleaving him to wonder how to make a living,
\nand where 7000 years of civilization
\nhave been scattered.<\/p>\n
Ali Ismaeel Abbas, age 10, has lost his arms,
\na hospital has lost its beds,
\nour president has lost his soul,
\nand I have lost faith in my country.
\nWhat shall it profit a conqueror
\nif the heaven he seeks is filled with smoke,
\nthe land with rubble,
\nhis veins with oil,
\nand his dreams with corpses?<\/p>\n
Can dollars reconstruct all this\u2014
\nbuy Omar new tools,
\ngive Ali new arms and
\nreplace his haunted dreams
\nwith TV sitcoms,
\nturn the National Museum into a Kmart,
\nand create the illusion we care?
\nSand is blowing across the plains,
\nsifting into every crevice,
\nclogging the valves of our hearts\u2026
\nand Saladin is on his way.
\n____________________________<\/p>\n
Tom Greening:<\/strong> \u201cI engage in five professional activities:<\/em> I suppose there was looting in 331 B. C.
\nFaculty Member at Saybrook University<\/em>
\nPrivate Practice of Psychotherapy<\/em>
\nClinical Professor of Psychology, UCLA<\/em>
\nInternational Editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology<\/em>
\nWriting (Poetry).\u201d<\/em>
\nwww.tomgreening.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\nwhen Alexander the Great “liberated” Babylon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}