Our weekly
compassionate listening circle
takes in this small room,
where I lie next
to a young German man,
holding his hand.
He sobs and chatters
through Holocaust guilt,
his father’s silence,
and the sense that his people
are flawed, cracked.
He believes that evil
may emerge at any time,
sucking him into
a violent darkness.

A son of the American South,
I listen.

This is a reposting, after I contacted the young man mentioned in the poem, now back in Germany. I was concerned about confidentiality, but he assures me there is no problem.

Days into this awful war in Iraq, replete with the imagery of war horror, it is clearer than ever that war wounds last for generations.

The breeze is sweet on this hillside.
Old trees stand high,
bamboo shoots insist on sunlight,
and pesky moles shape the soil’s economy.

(No. 29 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)

(Numeric reference to Han-shan’s poem reflects the order of presentation in Burton Watson’s translation, presented as Cold Mountain, Columbia University Press, 1970.)