Museworthy: Counting to Eleven

ONE Day eleven people poisoned themselves here.
Somewhere between those blinded by disease
and those blinded by rockets.

TWO Eyes that rested in fever and never moved again;
eyes that saw the atom.

THREE Armies who have taken charge
have banned cinema and music and women
on the street; words describing laughter and ball games
and evening. In makeshift beds

FOUR Children on their bellies, without legs and
the skin of their buttocks, are silent as

FIVE Young girls explain, as if explaining will explain,
how they lost their noses, their shyness
and twist their hands at the camera
as if it is nothing; as if it is attention they want,
but don't care if they get (that need is for us,
with our profiles and our familiarity with
the terror of beauty). Between them the
five young girls have only

SIX Hands...
And eleven if counted is eleven,

especially by its own standards,
and by that it is all.
Here it is a family —

SEVEN Adults and four children —
who after sickness and

EIGHT Land mines and starvation and rape
and torture only occasional,
blew themselves up with rat poison.

NINE O' clock and I watch it all in a report
and rub my bare toes over the new black tiles
of my kitchen floor and wiggle all

TEN And cannot imagine what it's like to be

ELEVEN But know that I too would sniff out the poison
if it promised the only promise
that could be kept

BY MTC CRONIN

MTC Cronin has had six books of poetry published, the most recent being Talking to Neruda's Questions and Bestseller (both Vagabond Press, 2001). Another collection, My Lover's Back, is forthcoming in 2002 (UQP). She is currently working on a PhD, Poetry and Law: Discourses of the Social Heart, and has recently received an Established Writers New Work Grant from the Australia Council for the Arts. Her books are available by contacting her at: <margie_cronin@hotmail.com> or ph: (02) 9550 2918.

From GLW issue 467