The Razed Cities

Cole Swensen

Statement: A Call for Silence

As the tremendous outpouring of activity these past few weeks makes evident, it is never too little and it is never too late And we must consider what we will do if it does come to war. We will need to come up with ever-more inventive modes of resistance-—and one I would like to suggest, among the continuing marches, emails, and letters, is silence. If we all take a vow of silence from the moment military action begins and refuse to speak until the killing stops, if thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of people refused to speak, it would be heard. Maybe not by Bush et al, but by the rest of the world It will be a way of joining them, and particularly of joining the people of Iraq, who, like us, have no say in this matter.

There can be no gesture	now
	that does not incorporate
as in to corps the body, moving
	outward
There can be no gesture
inward
	the city stands on a single finger.
Where is the photograph
that showed a single building still standing
	in the middle
He took the paintings out of the cabinet
and lined them along the wall.
The first thing I do whenever I move is paint the walls all white. There’s a painting of this
she said pointing to the photograph: “It’s perfectly white.”
“You mean it’s blank?”	“No, white.”
“You mean destroyed?”	“Then who are they?”

Winter 2003 vol 2 no 1