Yorem was interviewing me yesterday and I started talking about all the wars I was in and a phrase of Hilda Doolittle’s opus about London during WWII kept coming back to me:

trembling at a known street-corner,
we know not nor are known;
the Pythian pronounces — we pass on

to another cellar, to another sliced wall
where poor utensils show
like rare objects in a museum;

Pompeii has nothing to teach us,
we know crack of volcanic fissure,
slow flow of terrible lava,

pressure on heart, lungs, the brain
about to burst its brittle case
(what the skull can endure!):

over us, Apocryphal fire,
under us, the earth sway, dip of a floor,
slope of a pavement

The wrecks of homes they show on the TV as survivors return to what was left of their homes – now an exhibit.  A bed, where murdered babies were first conceived, riddled with bullets now, the babies burnt beyond recognition.  The lovers themselves may yet be alive, somewhere in Gaza.  I focus on the bed – an object – that will be replaced soon.  New babies will be made – that’s what helps my skull endure the brain’s pressure.