CLIFF DWELLERS
it’s noon and people are leaving
windows empty even shadows
know now to keep their distance
all that remains blank stone faces
the stones we use to hide behind
and call it living the sun grows pale
even it gets tired of trying so much
and the sky dims with it light fading
into moonlight the air turning thinner
as it does all is grey and deserted
only the sound of rock on rock
the slow clatter of shards sand
falling from broken edges craters
dust against dust the earth claiming
its own once more gravity prevailing
soon soldiers will be coming walking
behind armored vehicles stopping
at doorways shouting into gaps
where windows once were moving
from ruin to ruin block by block
leaving nothing behind them even
at this distance we can hear them
climbing towards us coming nearer
at the highest reaches survivors
have gathered telling their stories
tending to wounds knowing it’s only
a matter of time until they get here
IMPACT AREA
we can say this the dark circles
in the desert ringed with ash
smoke having gone its way
those circles with shoeprints
or the outlines of feet of legs
of palms dragging those circles
in the desert within larger circles
black and burning where not even
the spirits are left ones unburied
never washed prayed over not
even the spirits are left there
but have to make their way
to refugee camps for the dead
so many of them now moving
slowly nowhere to go they
no longer remember the circles
with bits of clothing bone
hair circles in larger circles
I’d say like ripples in a pond
where a stone passes through
echo of what broke the surface
but this is the desert all thickness
a surface without end where
nothing ripples nothing echoes
but silence this is the stone that
hits the water and stops there
its moment of impact preserved
and the darkness from it spreading
drawing closer every day
Harry Newman’s poetry has appeared widely in American journals. About his two poems, on Warscapes, Newman explains, "These are poems of collapsing distance, the moral distance of war and political violence. Brutality and dehumanization in one location inevitably find their way closer. “Impact area” is a formal term designating the area spanned by the detonation of a mortar or missile. Cliff Dwellers are those aware of the horrors to come - though there’s only so far you can climb to escape them." His plays have been presented at theaters across the U.S. as well as in The Netherlands and Germany. He currently lives in New York.