.
The diplomats deliberate
The diplomats deliberate:
another crises
somewhere
another catastrophe
elsewhere
but here
in this same clean room
across this same polished table
they discuss logistics
and money
and food
and who will do what
this time
and who did what
last time
as they have in the past
and will do again
the routine smothering
any urgency
any sense of history
all the particulars
refined into the same
smooth empty language
of crises management
their eyes deliberately turned away
from another image
of the dead scattered
across a desolate landscape
another image
of shattered shapes sheltered
under industrial flotsam
of cardboard, tin, plastic
populations displaced, lost in despair
with yet another image
of another starving child
potbellied
dirty
its face....faceless
with flies and mites mingling
on its hollow cheeks
and settling inside
its nostrils and its eyes.
Peter Goodwin taught at University in Thailand, an elementary school in England, and a secondary school in America. He also worked as a playwright in New York, and now writes poetry in Maryland. His poetry can be found in Rattle, Scribble, Luminosity, Delaware Poetry Review, Bent Pin, Twisted Tongue, and other journals.
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