Issue/Publication:

Poem

February 25, 2002

for Daniel Pearl

An insoluble grain stimulates nacre

shields an oyster’s tender flesh

from pain, creating the splendor of a pearl.

Thus suffering is lodged in the heart

of the world’s beauty.

Communicating “as if conducting an interview”

he never suspected the story

featured his assassin until a few quick strokes

sketched his throat a plum colored tulip

and his powerless head fell like a petal.

Wide eyed at the final instant

did he understand the debt of red-ink

pooling in his lap?

The camera he had hoped would credit

a ransom scooped him. He was

the last edition of himself. Reduced

to ciphers now he is “The Jew”, “The Journalist”

“the American” and finally, “the patient”

in a straight-to-video snuff film. The ‘doctors’

mock his wife, compounding bitter ironies

from gall, inoculating their own hearts

from grief. Because they cannot claw

pilots from the sky, they kill

whatever they can catch in the rocks..

Had he no notion how murders

to which others had signed his name

condemned him? Not know that rocks of Nablus

and Ramalla were aimed at his own forehead?

That stealing a kernel from a beggar’s bowl

can be a capital offense if money

is discovered in your pocket?

His employer relinquished his computer

to “authorities” at home and the neutral colors

of his press-pass turned catch-me crimson

the word “ENEMY” appeared

across his small laminated ID. Men

milking poppies, deemed his life

an overdue bill,

resented the shade he cast on the goat

they had staked for slaughter. Thirsty

for blood-offerings they calculate both

of equal worth.

And the world’s riches pass from hand to hand

and the hand of each giver shadows

for an instant, the hand of each receiver

and passes that darkness along with what is sought.

The sharp curse of the cutting grit disguised

transmitted through time, an accumulating

viral load.