Pietà
Artists, they counsel,
take all that anger building up in you
and use it
to make something beautiful
for the world to wear
or otherwise possess.
They say, of course you’re angry.
Look how Bush ignored our marches,
our passionate words,
and went to war anyway
against a broken army
and a worn down people.
Aesthetics, they say,
is the path.
Turn your rage
into wood, clay or stone,
into words and movement,
into play.
Whatever the material,
work it with the tools of your trade.
Pummel, gouge, chip away
at the block of anger
blocking your way.
Very well then
I shall make a pietà
not of marble nor of stone
but from a child’s broken body
and the shrapnel in his bones,
from his mother’s blood-drenched abaya
and her weeping all alone.
From her heart the deepest sorrow
shall illuminate her eyes
as she so gently cradles him
in the folds of a low lament,
and whispers over
and over again,
Here then is my rage
now become a thing of beauty,
sign and symbol
of what my country has done.
Not Mary with crucified son,
but a stricken Iraqi woman
with child upon her lap.
In his eyes she sees
a final flash of memory,
and now his life is past.
George submitted this poem for the 11th Station of the Cross as Agape’s annual witness in front of the State House. An advocate for the Iraqi people, George saw the effects of sanctions first-hand, and, as a Christian, he writes: “I see their suffering as a form of crucifixion perpetrated by the West.”
March 2015, Physicians for Social Responsibility Report on The War on Terror since 9/11.
“1 million people killed in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, i.e. a total of around 1.3 million since the invasion of Iraq. The total number of deaths in the three countries named above could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely.”
