The Duration

what if we lived and we ate salted bread during the war, what if we lived and burned our shed for wood during the war, what if we lived and hid in cellars during the war, what if we lived and faced air raids like the weather during the war, what if we lived and slept in ruins during the war, what if we lived and the old people refused to flee during the war, (what if we) what if we lived and nighttime was the worst during the war, what if we lived and the school was bombed during the war, what if we lived and our dogs turned up dead during the war, (what if we) what if we ran out of medicine and we lived during the war, what if we lost our eyesight and we lived during the war, what if we lost our limbs and we lived during the war, (what if we) what if we were bleeding-out and we lived during the war, (what if we) what if hospitals exploded and we lived during the war, what if we suffered radiation and we lived during the war, what if they plowed our graves and we lived during the war, (no one came to save us) what if we failed to explain this to the children

~~~

Was lying there like a lump, wondering what to write, then, looking up at my broadside of Kaminsky’s We Lived Happily During the War, got to writing.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/91413/we-lived-happily-during-the-war]

I have never personally been in the midst of war, but we have all been viewing and reading enough to know of the experiences enumerated here, broadly categorized as they are, reported widely over the last few years from places in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The poem may ask questions of those who are safe from these categories of war, like me, and they may represent questions those in the midst of it might be asking—truly, I cannot speak for them. What makes the poem for me is the final line, which verges on cliché, but isn’t. The rest is a bombardment. I find it difficult to write anything at this moment. May we live.