The machine did it coldly, as if no human hand had hidden behind the order just merely placed, and these streets, these geraniums on a hand-tended windowsill are already the past in the machine’s cold eyes.
Can there be a pause in a war long enough to vaccinate children, to supposedly preserve life, but not long enough to end it— and stop ending lives?
The reader is disappointed. Bored, to hear the truth: Whose hands order a daughter’s wedding cake with Crane’s-bill decorating it could also order a young man into the mouth of winter’s bloody frost?
Tell him of the dripping of strategic red lines, of the grave’s remarkable uncovered simplicity.
Write, as your job in a damn journalist tone the presenter lines, who’ll, in a professionally cold voice, deliver to the quivering like wind-blown petals sea-fish covered with the net banded ones.
*Signe Gjessing, SECTION VI OF LE BATEAU IVRE
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This poem stayed with me because it never lets the human disappear behind systems, headlines, or machines. The question about pausing a war long enough to vaccinate children, but not long enough to end it, is devastating in its simplicity. I also admired the contrast between ordinary acts of care and the decisions that send lives into violence. A powerful meditation on responsibility, language, and what it means to remain human.
So good, so true, so full of emotion...