Four years

[carobanano]

Yeah, I could write about war. But I found this poem in the New Yorker (one of the tangential benefits to being home), and it just kicked me in the gut when I read it. So I'll let it say the things I could never say so well.

The Graveyard Shift

I work the graveyard shift in a city of believers
hunched over a steel desk in a cone of light

facing a window with drawn blinds
beyond which the innocents are being slaughtered

in an enormous courtyard against all four walls
firing squads rotating around the clock

while masked men in the watchtowers
keep count in red ink on red pads

simultaneously recording and concealing
the numbers of dead

and nodding with each round of gunfire
mumbling praise to their leader

and his god whose righteousness and mercy
he mirrors while I keep to my work

with bowed head and unblinking eyes
sorting papers affixing stamps

having long ago given up trying
to stop my ears or black out my fear

my face burning not with shame but exhaustion
for I only sleep a few hours a night

and I eat once a day
cold scrapple and rice porridge

like a prisoner myself
in a cell that requires no bar or locks

unable to recognize my own handwriting
even when I've left myself a note

reminding me of who I once was but never
(anymore) what I might have been

which later I crumple and burn
ina standard-issue ashtray

the momentary lick of flame
no more or less remote to me than a star

--Nicholas Christopher