Shadow War
A Poetic Chronicle of September 11 and Beyond, Volume Three
(Revised, second edition)
Paperback: 76 pp.
Published: 2004
Beginning on January 21, 2002, and concluding
on April 18, 2002, Shadow War, Volume Three resumes Louis Daniel Brodsky’s chronicle of America’s
war on terrorism. In forty-one poems, he records the aftershocks created
by the September 11 devastations of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Significant events he portrays include the ongoing "cleanup" operations
in Afghanistan and the search for the elusive Osama bin Laden; controversy
over the detention of al-Qa’eda and Taliban forces in Camp X-Ray;
preparations for bringing John Walker Lindh to trial for treason; and
America’s return to complacency, with its politicians resumption
of partisan bickering.
Brodsky follows President Bush’s shift in emphasis, away from Afghanistan and toward the next theater of war: the "Axis of Evil" — Iran, North Korea, and, especially, Iraq, where our leaders hope to initiate a "regime change" within a short time. Yet, the focus remains in the Mideast, on the escalating attacks and retaliations raging between Palestinians and Israelis — acts only fueling the Muslim world’s hatred of the U.S. Many of the poems depict the increasingly frequent suicide bombings and their bloody aftermaths. This book culminates with Israel’s full-scale incursion into the West Bank and Gaza, its sieges of Arafat’s Ramallah compound and the Church of the Nativity, seized by Islamic militants.
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Holy Saturday
This warm Saturday morning in March,
Suspended between Good Friday and Easter Sunday,
All of nature's dormant ministers of life,
Poised to awaken from their moratoriums,
Break into lush jubilation
As flowers, leaves, budding fruit trees, grass.
The world holds its breath,
Prays that Israel doesn't implode,
Taking with it, in an apocalyptic ripple effect,
The rest of the Middle East,
Then Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas — Earth.
The leaves, flowers, grass, budding fruit trees
Are oblivious to the self-destruction,
The grotesque eruptions of anger, hatred, violence
Disrupting the alienated lives
Of the generations of Noah's son Shem,
Fighting to die as martyrs, and the Chosen, enduring,
In an impossible chaos of bellicosity.
Even as God's photosynthetic essences
Metamorphose into verdure,
Evil agents are working in the service of evanescence,
Plotting to sabotage the peaceable kingdom.
