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      November 6, 2012Amerika, Mon Amour (2003)Sam Hamill

      The fascist in the White House can’t hear,
      can’t see the faces of the suffering he authors,
      nor can his brother, Saddam the Tyrant,
      who remains in hiding, his finger still pulling a trigger.
      All the little Caesars build their evil empires
      of blood and castles made of sand. But empires
      crumble, while the misery continues. Tyrants rise
      and fall, and poets tell their stories.
      In America, they’ve named a new poet laureate.
      Caesars love their clowns, their little amusements.
      But the poet from Baghdad continues in exile,
      in Paris, and for twenty years couldn’t call home
      to his mother, and in Piacenza sings, “Baghdad, Mon Amour,”
      and his voice never trembles. Even a little truth
      can prove deadly. Nevertheless he’ll one day
      return to his home again, and the sweetness of his song,
      more beautiful than silence, will lift me in its arms
      because I will join him in Baghdad, mon amour,
      because poets and people are brothers, sisters in the skin,
      and because fascists can’t live forever.
      Salah al Hamdani, your name and your song
      is my prayer. It’s true, blood flows like oil
      and burns like oil, and it’s the children who perish
      for your tyrant and for mine. All the Caesars hunger
      after money and power. All their empires
      fall. Salah al Hamdani, I invoke your name
      and kiss your cheek here in Piazza Duomo
      because the dead have no names in Amerika,
      the dead in Baghdad, the dead in Kabul.
      The dead, the dead and the dying.
      And those who merely survive.
      Our Italian nights are full of wine and talk
      and love. We have nothing but our songs
      to stand against Caesar’s throne and his call
      for blood. Old men should fight the wars. But
      it’s always the innocent we send to annihilate
      the innocent, filling their heads with lies.
      The fascist in the White House sleeps well
      most nights, guards at every door. Saddam is in
      his castle or his cave, his guards guarding too.
      The White House poet sleeps. Salah, what
      can we tell them, what can we do to disturb these
      sleeping giants? Italy is a world from ours, and ours
      a world the Caesars and their jesters never knew.
      Salaam, Salah al Hamdani. I invoke
      your name to name the nameless, I invoke
      your song to bring us all back home.

      from #22 - Winter 2004

      Sam Hamill

      “I grew up on a ranch in Utah, a farm in Utah, and my old man, my adopted father, loved poetry. And he would sometimes recite poetry while he worked. And he would explain to me, the rhythm of the work would help you decide what poem to sort of say. The way you sometimes hum or sing when you work—well, he recited poetry that way, and I think that was what first turned me on to poetry.”

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