The
first thing I do is look for a final body count.
Forty
dead, hostages at a concert.
One
hundred dead. Two explosions
at
a stadium.
Patrons
of restaurants picked off. One hundred
twenty
dead.
Over
150. The concert raid is over.
As
if a number will help me negotiate my reaction;
is
this a small, medium, large, or super-size
terroristic
attack?
I
don’t feel anything.
Pictures,
show me pictures. Show me blood
in
the streets, show me the faces of the bereaved.
I
want to see the hostages coming out of the concert,
the
stadium explode. But then,
this
image:
a
body, outside a restaurant, a sheet over it,
her
arm exposed, a bit of pretty jewelry
on
a lifeless wrist.
I
am in Paris, on that Rue,
crying
at that dead woman with the sparkle
who
was enjoying a Friday night out
and
died for…what?
Meinke,
where are you? Where are the better
poets
who
see the cause-and-effect of political war from the street level,
who
have better ways of describing the empathy
I
tried to feel.
Here
are the bodies of the good
people
who died before hero came, and into the night
flees
the “giant ogre dragon troll.” Tell them
how to
temper
my their desire for revenge
and
not attach it to the first available hooligan
some
government props up as the Enemy.
I
cannot feel anything.
I
cry for insensitivity
because
I know
on
Earth, 150 dead Parisians
is
a drop in the bucket as far as body counts go,
and
I don’t want to cry that much this morning.
