Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
Diane kendig
52 years old
Lynn, MA
Alms for Lorca
"Give him alms, woman. For nothing in life can equal the agony of being blind in Granada." --Spanish folk tale, qtd in Michener's Iberia
Reading how they shot you on a hill before dawn could disclose anything, I recall your poem, "If I die, leave the balcony open," and I want you to be left with that vista: children eating oranges, reapers cutting wheat.
So nearsighted, you wrote your hometown into ballads and jondos even from Harlem even from Madrid, wanted to watch it forever, even when echoes of blood foreshadowed your return and shuttered your windows.
What agony to see your Granada become one dark prison cell, I can only imagine from the thick blank cataract of paper you left on the table in that last room,
and, sickened, I turn again to your work, bright denial of death, and I want to go on leaning out windows and doorways
