The Baghdad Museum is empty

THE BAGHAD MUSEUM IS EMPTY

The Baghdad Museum is empty yet
We are told, in this war
The Angel of Death deals
A delicate hand:
In the guns’ sights,
Fifty faces stamped on a stack
Of poker cards
Fifty kilo smart bombs
Invisible, silent, first punched
On the lap-tops …in the war room of Quatar
Beamed from Pine Gap to outer space
Ground invisible B52’s deadly cargo rains over
Specified ten meters square,
Curtesy, Baghdad’s street directory
To kill the Evil One (who is it today?) reported
Dining in a fashionable restaurant

A smart war, a skilled hand, a sharp knife,
for Iraq, surgery,
Removal of malignant tissue, whilst…
The patient lives.

On the streets of Baghdad,
A message from beyond the clouds,
First harbingers of peace -
White bed sheets of Baghdad’s City hospital
Drying in the sun
Turn chocolate black caked in dry blood.

Hapless faces of the mauled stare through the CBN lens
Into my living room, for
In this war, the Angel of Death comes with finesse

Only collateral damage and friendly fire harm the innocent
And THAT is reasonable

We can rest content, in oblivion
in the darkness,
Sleep peacefully on our beds.


S Ivanovich, May 2003