News of Wars

All the hurt and the harm
People do to people
Can stagger a body

Contemplating at peace.
You are glad for the peace.
It glides its wide river

Between you and that shore
Where smoke rises with screams.
You imagine yourself

As a body that’s torn,
But you know that bodies
Must be willing to tear,

And it’s so hard to think
How that willingness works,
How deliberate harm

Comes together with hurt,
At intimate as sex
And as aloof as porn,

Gnawing like starvation,
But if starvation were
Both to starve and to eat.