“i’ve been wrong i’ve been down / been to the bottom of every bottle / these five words in my head”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday:

Searchers, D. Nurkse

We gave our dogs a button to sniff,
or a tissue, and they bounded off
confident in their training,
in the power of their senses
to re-create the body,

but after eighteen hours in rubble
where even steel was pulverized
they curled on themselves
and stared up at us
and in their soft huge eyes
we saw mirrored the longing for death:

then we had to beg a stranger
to be a victim and crouch
behind a girder, and let the dogs
discover him and tug him
proudly, with suppressed yaps,
back to Command and the rows
of empty triage tables.

But who will hide from us?
Who will keep digging for us
here in the cloud of ashes?


From his 2005 collection Burnt Island, along with other 9/11 poems.

---L.

Subject quote from How You Remind Me, Nickelback.

Comments

[drpanda99]

Thanks for sharing this, Larry! What a powerful poem and such imagery.

[larryhammer]

Bu ke qi. I knew as soon as I came across it, I'd have to share.