An Old Man In Baghdad


By Dennis L. Siluk
Dec. 18, 2004

[Poetic Prose]

How many people must die in the name of peace?

In Baghdad, the birds are not singing, softly, like in my backyard; men and women walk guarded all around. An old man, a public man sits in a park. He’s been in the trenches of course; he’s heard the hounds of war. He’s not over seventy yet. Just watching, a smile, his lips quiver—burnt-out fire in those old tired eyes. ‘How many people must die for peace?’ he murmurs.

“What an experience,” he mumbles; restless, moving about, his body not able to slow down. Only he knows what he is sorry for; ashamed of. He had killed many things that had been lovely in the world. There was a reason to his thinking. It didn’t matter anymore. There were tears in his eyes, “I’ll never talk about it again,” he sighs.

“No one comes out of war untouched,” he groans, looking at the hounds eating scraps of rat meat. “The war, mud—muddy people, how did I live through it,” he grunts. He looks about, solders, solders, everywhere, ‘…grab your moment, do your loving,’ whispers the old man. He chants, ‘In war you get to hate all people, it is only the bystander’s yelling peace.’

“The bystander, the spectator, they forget, forget—that for every dead man’s life, you put out a light, a life beyond them.” This is why the old man was weeping; a soul, American or Iraqi, or who knows—souls tossed out of their bodies and thrown to the desert winds. These were the images he brushed aside, now looking down, alone with himself, down for the weeping dead, all now anonymous, reduced to a dead pulse for him.

The warm air of the park hung motionless over him, as he swallowed the sounds of shifting feet, resting his back on a tree, falling slowly to sleep.

#426/12/16/04

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