WarVoyeursbyJuanFelipeHerrera_PoetryFoundation.pdf

2023/5/29 01:02 War Voyeurs by Juan Felipe Herrera | Poetry Foundation

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52284/war-voyeurs 1/2

War Voyeurs

BY J UA N F E L I P E H E R R E R A

for Clara Fraser

I do not understand why men make war.

Is it because artillery is the most stoic example

of what flesh can become?

Is it because the military plan is the final map

drawn by the wisest hunter?

Is it because the neutron ray is the invincible finger

no one will disobey?

Is it because the flood of blood is the proper penance

workers must pay for failing tribute at the prescribed

hour?

I do not understand why men make war.

Is it because when death is multiple and expanding, there

among the odd assemblages, arbitrary and unnamed, there

among the shrivelled mountains, distorted and hollow, there

among the liquid farms and cities, cold and sallow, there

among the splintered bones of children, women, men and cattle

there and only there, the eerie head of power is being born?

Is it because submission is the only gesture to be rehearsed,

to be dressed, to be modeled, to be cast, to be chosen

in the one and only one drama to be staged in the theater of

this world, where everyone must act with the backbone humbled

with the mascara of bondage, with the lipstick of slaves under

the light of gentle assassination with applause piercing the ground

forever?

2023/5/29 01:02 War Voyeurs by Juan Felipe Herrera | Poetry Foundation

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52284/war-voyeurs 2/2

2008 Juan Felipe Herrera. Reprinted by permission of the University of Arizona Press. This material is

protected from unauthorized downloading and distribution.

Source: Half of the World in Light (The University of Arizona Press, 2008)

Is it because war is the secret room of all things to be kept

sealed and contained, to be conquered and renamed woman

enclosed by an empire of walls, vaults, hinges and locks with

the hot key that men and only men must possess for an eternal

evening to visit and contemplate, to snap open a favorite window

and gaze at the calibrated murder as lovers of beauty?

NEWSLETTERS

PRESS

POETRY MOBILE APP

61 West Superior Street,

Chicago, IL 60654