Endless War
By Linda Bamber
Cassandra swore there was no Gulf of Tonkin
but of course
no one believed her.
She knew the Trojan Horse was loaded with death
and that there were no WMD’s in Iraq
and if Paris, her brother, stole Helen
Troy would fall
and all its people be enslaved.
Then the Pentagon Papers came out.
Didn’t I . . . ? said Cassandra when people were shocked.
Now infanticide
hostage-taking
retaliation beyond imagination.
Genocide. Starvation.
Cassandra tears her hair.
Since Balfour’s birth
(frantic, disbelieved)
she’s tried to tell us this
is what would be
from the river to the sea.
Poet’s Note
In classical texts, Cassandra was admired by the god Apollo, who gave her the gift of prophecy. In a different mood, he added the curse that no one would believe her.
The Balfour Declaration of 1917 is generally referenced as the moment when Britain decided it would suit its geo-political interests to establish a Jewish Protectorate in the Middle East.
Linda Bamber is a poet and a Professor of English at Tufts University. Both her poetry collection, Metropolitan Tang, and her fiction collection, Taking What I Like, were published by David R. Godine, Publisher. Widely excerpted and anthologized, her critical book on Shakespeare, Comic Women, Tragic Men: Gender and Genre in Shakespeare, was published by Stanford University Press. Bamber has published in periodicals such as The Harvard Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, The New York Times Book Review, The Kenyon Review, The Florida Review, and The Missouri Review. She is currently writing a novella based on the cross-country expedition of Lewis and Clark.
Photo credit: “Trojan Horse” by Terra Incognita! via a Creative Commons license.
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