The Taking of Dengi.


I have been taken along by Apaches.
A dry landscape.
Just a few wisps of grass and scattered flowers.
We walk miles through the quiet hills
until we overlook a valley
with a road and men on guard.
The assault begins:
"Allah Ouarkbah",
as they surface on the skyline and show their guns.
Then the flash of rockets launching,
a rushing sound,
the puff of dust in the valley,
the returning thud,
and the soldiers of the holy struggle
dodge down to capture the road.

I see only sky, ground and people,
but the battle proceeds.
Grasshopper and butterfly
I thought would be startled,
but they dance and chatter
as fizzing bullets invisibly pass.
One man is pulverised
as a rocket explodes.
Another loses his leg to a mine
and is carried by friends.
Others hit by shrapnel touch their wounds.

The dead go to no grave yard,
but lie under flags,
banners that float in the wind.
They have gone to milk and honey,
to endless women.
The land is injured,
needs time to heal.
Bomb craters fill with water,
reeds and tadpoles appear,
where orphans find faces mirrored
in infinite blue,
look to the sky
and wonder in silence.


Afghanistan.      September 89.

__________________________________________________

1.Clarity check. What am I going on about with these two lines:
"I see only sky, ground and people,
but the battle proceeds."?
I don't need to be stupidly clear. I just want to work out where I am on the
clarity/ obscurity spectrum with this ref.

2. Accuracy check. Does anyone know if the Muslim heaven has a surfeit of
virgins? I had it from one of these Muj guys that it does, and took it at
face value, but am sceptical in retrospect and want collateral info. After
all he was trying to make me a Muslim and had just explained that in the
afterlife I would have rivers of milk and honey and I'd just replied that I
had a whole jar in the cupboard at home and could get all the milk I needed,
that I didn't long for more and then he brought in the bit about the endless
young women. It could be that he made it up just to get the better of me. He
had an incentive. However it made its way into this poem and I wouldn't want
to misrepresent any group as a result. I could just ask Muslims that I meet
here, but it's an awkward thing to bring up. Does anyone know, off hand? How
interested am I in the answer? I can't tell you that.