Excerpt: 'The War Works Hard'

The War Works Hard by Dunya Mikhail Paperback, 79 pages List Price: $13.95

The War Works Hard

How magnificent the war is!

How eager

and efficient!

Early in the morning,

it wakes up the sirens

and dispatches ambulances

to various places,

swings corpses through the air,

rolls stretchers to the wounded,

summons rain

from the eyes of mothers,

digs into the earth

dislodging many things

from under the ruins...

Some are lifeless and glistening,

others are pale and still throbbing...

It produces the most questions

in the minds of children,

entertains the gods

by shooting fireworks and missiles

into the sky,

sows mines in the fields

and reaps punctures and blisters,

urges families to emigrate,

stands beside the clergymen

as they curse the devil

(poor devil, he remains

with one hand in the searing fire)...

The war continues working, day and night.

It inspires tyrants

to deliver long speeches,

awards medals to generals

and themes to poets.

It contributes to the industry

of artificial limbs,

provides food for flies,

adds pages to the history books,

achieves equality

between killer and killed,

teaches lovers to write letters,

accustoms young women to waiting,

fills the newspapers

with articles and pictures,

builds new houses

for the orphans,

invigorates the coffin makers,

gives grave diggers

a pat on the back

and paints a smile on the leader's face.

The war works with unparalleled diligence!

Yet no one gives it

a word of praise.

Bag of Bones

What good luck!

She has found his bones.

The skull is also in the bag

the bag in her hand

like all other bags

in all other trembling hands.

His bones, like thousands of bones

in the mass graveyard,

his skull, not like any other skull.

Two eyes or holes

with which he listened to music

that told his own story,

a nose

that never knew clean air,

a mouth, open like a chasm,

was not like that when he kissed her

there, quietly,

not in this place

noisy with skulls and bones and dust

dug up with questions:

What does it mean to die all this death

in a place where the darkness plays all this silence?

What does it mean to meet your loved ones now

with all of these hollow places?

To give back to your mother

on the occasion of death

a handful of bones

she had given to you

on the occasion of birth?

To depart without death or birth certificates

because the dictator does not give receipts

when he takes your life?

The dictator has a heart, too,

a balloon that never pops.

He has a skull, too, a huge one

not like any other skull.

It solved by itself a math problem

That multiplied the one death by millions

to equal homeland

The dictator is the director of a great tragedy.

He has an audience, too,

an audience that claps

until the bones begin to rattle—

the bones in bags,

the full bag finally in her hand,

unlike her disappointed neighbor

who has not yet found her own.

I Was In A Hurry

Yesterday I lost a country.

I was in a hurry,

and didn't notice when it fell from me

like a broken branch from a forgetful tree.

Please, if anyone passes by

and stumbles across it,

perhaps in a suitcase

open to the sky,

or engraved on a rock

like a gaping wound,

or wrapped

in the blankets of emigrants,

or canceled

like a losing lottery ticket,

or helplessly forgotten

in Purgatory,

or rushing forward without a goal

like the questions of children,

or rising with the smoke of war,

or rolling in a helmet on the sand,

or stolen in Ali Baba's jar,

or disguised in the uniform of a policeman

who stirred up the prisoners

and fled,

or squatting in the mind of a woman

who tries to smile,

or scattered

like the dreams

of new immigrants in America.

If anyone stumbles across it,

return it to me please.

Please return it, sir.

Please return it, madam.

It is my country...

I was in a hurry

when I lost it yesterday.

From The War Works Hard, published 2005 by New Directions. Copyright © 2005 by Dunya Mikhail. Translation copyright © 2005 by Elizabeth Winslow. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.