General Mother Teresa
Emperor Dalai Lama XIV
Chief of Staff Thich Nhat Hanh
Army Chaplain John Paul II
followed by the shades of Ghandi
Sakharov, Sartre & his uncle
Albert Schweitzer
went to the bombed out streets
talked to Moslem Bosnians in
the burnt out grocery stores
parlayed with Croatian & Serbian Generals & Parliament
asked them to quit shooting & firing
artillery from the mountainside
overlooking villages
emptied of grandmothers --
So now there was quiet -- a few fires
smoldered in back alleys
a few corpses stank in wet fields
-- But who owns these houses? The
cinema theatres with broken doors?
Who owns that grocery store, that City Hall,
that windowless school with broken
rooftiles?
Who owns these little apartments, now
all worshippers of Allah
pray in towns besieged 100 miles away
overcrowded in tenements & tents, with
UN portosans at the crossroads?
Who owns these abandoned alleys &
drugstores with shattered bottle shards over
the sidewalk & inside the door?
Who'll be the judge, attorney, file
legal briefs,
bankruptcy papers, affidavits of ownership,
deeds, old tax receipts?
Who'll council who lives where in the rubble,
who'll sleep in what brokenwalled hut
in the full moonlight when spring clouds
pass over the face
of the man in the moon at the end of May?
Emperor Dalai Lama XIV
Chief of Staff Thich Nhat Hanh
Army Chaplain John Paul II
followed by the shades of Ghandi
Sakharov, Sartre & his uncle
Albert Schweitzer
went to the bombed out streets
talked to Moslem Bosnians in
the burnt out grocery stores
parlayed with Croatian & Serbian Generals & Parliament
asked them to quit shooting & firing
artillery from the mountainside
overlooking villages
emptied of grandmothers --
So now there was quiet -- a few fires
smoldered in back alleys
a few corpses stank in wet fields
-- But who owns these houses? The
cinema theatres with broken doors?
Who owns that grocery store, that City Hall,
that windowless school with broken
rooftiles?
Who owns these little apartments, now
all worshippers of Allah
pray in towns besieged 100 miles away
overcrowded in tenements & tents, with
UN portosans at the crossroads?
Who owns these abandoned alleys &
drugstores with shattered bottle shards over
the sidewalk & inside the door?
Who'll be the judge, attorney, file
legal briefs,
bankruptcy papers, affidavits of ownership,
deeds, old tax receipts?
Who'll council who lives where in the rubble,
who'll sleep in what brokenwalled hut
in the full moonlight when spring clouds
pass over the face
of the man in the moon at the end of May?
May 6, 1993, 3AM
Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997),
poet, icon, prophet
