The Pied Piper
Cover of The Nation, September 24, 2007.
His face, neck, tie,
background,
all made up of more than
three thousand tiny mosaics.
Did you find your son?
Was he on the forehead,
the lips,
the bridge of the nose,
perched on the lapel flag?
Did you see your little girl?
Was she on his shoulder,
his ear,
his thinning hair?
Did you find your mommy?
Was she near his heart?
The designers
tried to help us visualize
the number of Americans
the Rat Catcher had killed.
In those tiny mosaics,
Americans saw
the evil of the piper
whose catchy tune they followed.
Today,
with more than four thousand dead,
the mosaics would be smaller,
the faces,
more blurry.
The designers did not include
the injured
(more than a hundred thousand),
or the suicides
(hundreds each year),
or the wives and girlfriends
the soldiers murder
between tours of duty.
They did not include
the Iraqis,
soldiers and civilians,
each of those American boys
killed, injured, abused,
before he was wounded,
or sent home in a box.
(more than a million).
For a true portrait,
each mosaic of an American soldier
would have to contain,
like nesting Russian dolls,
its own mosaics,
thousands of tiny specs,
barely visible,
blending into each other,
of Iraqis and others
killed, maimed,
raped, tortured,
orphaned,
imprisoned,
impoverished,
exiled,
disappeared.
Even at a microscopic level,
they don’t fit.
The murdered don’t fit.
Case and Kling
will have to design
a portrait that,
like a sonogram,
shows the inside,
so we can see
the microscopic mosaics
that line his skull,
where the dead will feel deader.
But, they won’t fit there either.
They will have to go down
into his chest,
find his heart,
touch it.
They will know then
it was the dead
leading the dead
into war.