ONCE UPON a        TIME
                                                                                          ezine at l'atelier bonita
                                                     established since december 2002

A Natural Untidiness                                   by  Jeff White Five thousand years of war, weather, and waste they endured, as armies and empires came and went. Babylon's fall, the Mongol terror, the collateral damage of conquest and plunder - all these they survived, the remains of near-forgotten worlds. Jewels of princes, marbles, bronzes, books. Treasures from stone-age graves, from the ziggurats of Uruk. Because wise men cared to remember and learn. How many seconds does it take to smash the arms off an Assyrian marble statue? Ten, twenty, sixty? Not much longer than it takes for a missile to blow the arms off a 12-year-old Iraqi boy. Sumerian jars and Greek amphorae lie in fragments. A lyre that once charmed ancient eyes and ears now has scars where gold leaf is clumsily scraped away and precious jewels hacked off. Tablets with humanity's first writing, strange markings pressed by learned scriveners on lumps of ancient Tigris clay, are again become dust. Is this the price of war? Even Hitler spared the Ponte Vecchio. The permanent is made ephemeral, precious relics turned to common loot, while soldiers, M-16s on shoulders, stand by, smoking, uncaring, unknowing, as on that infernal day when Alexandria's library succumbed to the flames, undoing the works of ages. But the oil wells remain secure in the cradle of civilization. [Ed. - The title of this poem is a direct quote from US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's characterization of the looting of Baghdad.] ©2003 Jeff White _______________ Jeff White is a Toronto poet, anti-war activist, soccer nut, and singer. In his spare time he practises law.

                                                   ONCE UPON      a TIME
                                                                                          ezine at l'atelier bonita
                                                     established since december 2002