Poppy's Peace
We can pave Iraq
  Mesopotamia, Fertile Crescent,
  Land of Babylon and Ur
  Cradle of the Western world
We can pave Iraq, and put up a parking lot.
  Neat white lines
  Space for every emir's Rolls
We STILL must face (and fear)
  The Initifadah (in its nth year)
  New debts to the Likud and Shamir
  And our new-found ally, Assad
        "And Baghdad darken and the bridge
         Across the silent river gone
         And through Arabia the edge
         Of evening widen and steal on
                *****
         And here face downward in the sun
         To feel how swift how secretly
         The shadow of the night comes on ..."
--John R. Likins (with apologies to Joni Mitchell & Archibald MacLeish!)
                           Jan. 31, 1991 -- Day 16 in the "Liberation of Kuwait"