Anti-War Haiku Wall

Burials
Gary Blankenship (USA)

today another came home to be buried
as the day before

and the day before that

and before

and before

               105

for the 90 days since victory was declared

and another will come tomorrow

and the next tomorrow

and the next

and the next

an average of better than one a day

until

October 11

equals the number

destroyed homegrown at

Oklahoma City

*

one hundred and five

is not a big number

even written out in text

smaller than the traffic deaths per year

crack babies

crib deaths

broken battered skulls

than the three thousand and thirty one known at 911

        (to be reached in 2011

         not an election year)

infinitesimal besides African civil wars

      Aids

religious slayings from Ireland to Tibet

and all those between

starvation in the barrios

even the dictator's slaughter of his own

there or

on some other sub-continent

where life means less than

an unclean pig

*

we buried pets and broken birds

beneath the sour plum

in the south orchard

we tossed egg-eating dogs

and unwanted litters

into a sinkhole

beyond the dynamite stump

I buried my last pet

under the bedroom window

*

we bury our children

one a day

next to their fathers

and their father's fathers

amidst an ocean of flags

and an occasional gray stone

engraved

unknown