NVN Thursday: WAR BREAKS OUT…
by Indran Amirthanayagam
Source: The Spectator
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in every field, on every street, booming, blooming, blasting, blathering, while fishmonger and greengrocer, student and priest, run home until walls shudder and windows crack and shrapnel rains on the silver, the cats, the children, oh the children bleeding and screaming. What absolute lack of foresight, no bunkers, no caverns, no metro tunnels close by to wait until bombers and drones return to base, nowhere to hide. In the fields, farmer on a tractor, another with a hoe; tally ho, fellow, go now to your God. We the executioners rule the skies. War did not break like a pimple or rash or pus-ridden bacterial flesh. A human being ordered bombers and bombs to launch. A human being, otherwise known as a leader, a democrat, of what’s otherwise seen as a democracy. And by the way, the State is me.
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Indran Amirthanayagam has just published his translation of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books, 2025). Other recent publications include Seer (Hanging Loose Press) and The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil). He is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Mad Hat Press published his love song to Haiti: Powèt Nan Pò A (Poet of the Port). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is a collection of Indran's poems. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.