Acceptance by a vast majority of Americans of the bombing in Afghanistan makes one so sad; sad that we forget or are ignorant of the greatness of America.  America was built and born out of the waves of immigration from countries all over the world; including Islamic countries.  These immigrants brought with them the beating core of their culture with which to enrich and to endow Americans even down to the seventh generation.  To pick some ethnic group or some religious group out of all these our founders to define as enemy and to cheer on to destruction is to forget origins of the Greatness of America.

And, as John Donne put it, we are all part of the main.  Should we rejoice at the needless, senseless death of people in Afghanistan anymore than we mourn the senseless death of those who died on 11 September?.  I know of no natural law or religious script which allows these false dichotomies.  For myself, I refuse to take sides with those who counsel death and laugh with blood-limned lips.

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FACES

Faces:
I've seen faces.
I've seen traces of faces
of friends
in places
they've never been.

Faces of parchment yellow and gold
faces of ebony, strong and bold
faces of leather, open and old.

Faces of youngsters, faces of age,
faces of paisley, faces of beige.

Faces with ashes, faces with jewel
faces with bindi, faces with kohl.
Traces of faces hidden in veil;
Traces of faces of girls in Kabul

Faces of hunger, faces of bone.
Faces of anger, faces of stone,

Faces of soldiers hung in the sky
faces of soldiers ready to die.
faces of children ready to cry.

Faces of nurses, tender with care
faces of doctors, with mercy to spare.

Faces of mothers, faces of birth,
faces of parents, faces of mirth.
Faces of girls, laughing alert,
turning to boys ready to flirt.

Faces in Leningrad
with structures of bone
faces of enemies who've done me no harm
faces of friends I've never known.

Faces of women in Istanbul;
large bulbous nose, missing teeth,
faces that bear centuries of wear;
faces of mothers late in the day
washing clothes outside of a mosque,
laughing in soft bawdy play
while inside their Muslim men pray.

Faces from Africa,
ever surprise;
mahogany faces
with wise knowing eyes.

Faces from China
neither curious or quaint
preoccupied with things
more important than tourists complaint.

Faces from Mississippi
burning with hate;
burning dull and slow
with some incestuous trait.

Faces of athletes
taut with the strain,
faces of effort,
faces of pain.

I've watched faces
of men ready for lies
watching women come
into a room with shrew, measuring eyes.

I've watched faces
of women watching men
watching and wanting
to trust them again.

I've seen faces
of women watching me;
wondering a while
if it's worth the effort
to give me a smile.

I've known faces
of women deep
in the secrets of love that they
only can keep.

I've known faces walking
along dusty paths of the past
fighting with faces, fighting to last;
fighting to live long enough to pass
traces of bones and traces of teeth,
traces of hair and traces of nose
for children whose unquiet future
they only suppose.

Faces of hope,
faces of faith,
faces of trust and
and faces of grace
caught in the churches
and caught in the choirs
caught in the service of beggars and liars.

These are the faces,
ancient faces of stone;
faces I've loved with passion
and anger at the uses
their bodies have known.

3 March 89

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This is a variation of an excerpt from: America, The Great. This version tries to do something quite different from the first version...it attempts to give more substance to the anger in the last line which appears in both versions.

For myself, I like the other version better... Both versions are explicitely modelled after Langston Hughes' poem, Rivers.

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