leonardcohenforum.com

No Red Roses in a Blue Room

. . . one can live without having survived.
Carolyn Forché

Truly, I have survived but that is all:
the death squads sweeping the hills,
women and children burned in foxholes
by the judicious use of flamethrowers.

The dead received no proper burial,
no priest to intone the last rites,
to annoint their pale temples:
machine-gunned families, dumped

into mass graves dug in clay:
no red roses in a blue room!
Still, I must write of the losses,
compose these words of tribute,

until I am laid in my box
of Andalucian wood.

Christopher T. George

This and my "Mike Gullo" go together well, in a way. Both are written in memorium of people we don't really know; somehow we both felt a pull to erect some kind of monument.

Thanks, Manna. I agree.

Chris