The UN Sounds Blue
There are jackels out there in the fields,
guarding a hundred ghosts;
dead Roman soldiers
disintegrating near Saladdin's castle.
-a bat skirts through the early morning air
swallowing and swallowing-
The UN makes another patrol
down the thorny roads of South Lebanon
the sun will climb over the horizon
one more time
to make a small history
as if Christ walked here
sweeping for land mines
in the frost cracked hills.
The jackal out back is innocent if we let her be
leave her to her pups.
Their cry sounds like a herd of goats,
or a hundred frogs;
or dying birds;
a plague of locusts.
We could catch one and give it a name
create a race of stray dogs
sought after by collectors of uncommon things.
-but a god damned hunter shoots her anyway-
As bats witness to Rome and Geneva,
the weary eyes of the UN
hide in jeeps and tanks;
big white tanks
their blue flag courses in the wind
flappity flap flap flap,
it sounds blue, like blue flappity flap
in the cold southern wind
full of jackal.
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