Killing

 

Killing

My father knew men and animals 

did not die the same way.  A man 

would kill a horse or a cow or a pig 

with respect he’d never show a man.  

Killing a pig, a man would steady it, 

prepare it for the single killing blow, 

work to make its suffering quick 

if not instant, a poised hammer 

ready to strike down in such a way 

the pig wouldn't see it or hear it, 

would hardly feel it on the back 

of its head in that one sure spot 

that would end it before it knew it.  

My father knew that wasn’t the way 

men killed each other.  He had seen 

men crucified and hung, castrated 

and frozen to death, women raped 

and beaten and shot, their breasts

torn apart by bayonets, their  babies 

thrown and scattered in the air like sand.

He knew suffering is the sauce 

we reserve for men and women.  

___________

The poem is from my book Echoes of Tattered Tongues.

The photo is of some of the dead at Dresden after we bombed it.  There were more dead of course.  The rough estimate, according to Kurt Vonegut n his novel Slaughterhouse 5, is about 135,000.  

So it goes.