If There Is Ink - Carolyn Forché

[Larry Robinson]

If There Is Ink         
 
If there is ink for this hour if there is something to say to write that would send
the tanks the convoys and transports into reverse on the roads they have rutted
send them back to the borders they crossed send them back, and the hours too that
have passed since dawn on the twenty-fourth day of the second month send those
hours with them, and the enemy soldiers dragging with them their crematorium
and the corpses of their fellow soldiers they have left behind and their own wounded
send them back if there is ink if there is something to write that would raise the cities
from the ruins the apartment blocks hospitals schools that would put the cities back
as they were I would give everything to fill my pen with it
 
        - Carolyn Forché