I read about new weaponry, the old
Linguistic origins of thermobaric.
News channels repeat and repeat
Enumerations of the unthinkable
That I cannot absorb. I retreat
Into the familiar shelter of words.
A target – the diminutive of targe –
Originally meant a small, round shield,
A word that built itself into shelter
A shelter being a formation of shields.
When target galvanised itself into verb
It first meant to shield, to offer shelter.
No word of this nor any measured
Shift of meaning over the centuries,
Is of any significance at this moment
For those whose shelters are targets
Or for those others who are targeting
The sheltering basements of Mariupol.
Aerial footage pulses with digital circles
Fragmenting into outbursts of smoke
Above targets that had been theatres,
Had been hospitals, had been schools.
Meaning has sunk unfathomably below
Words, howling itself towards silence.
Paddy Bushe won The Irish Times Poetry Now Award for On a Turning Wing (Dedalus 2016). He is a member of Aosdána
Linguistic origins of thermobaric.
News channels repeat and repeat
Enumerations of the unthinkable
That I cannot absorb. I retreat
Into the familiar shelter of words.
A target – the diminutive of targe –
Originally meant a small, round shield,
A word that built itself into shelter
A shelter being a formation of shields.
When target galvanised itself into verb
It first meant to shield, to offer shelter.
No word of this nor any measured
Shift of meaning over the centuries,
Is of any significance at this moment
For those whose shelters are targets
Or for those others who are targeting
The sheltering basements of Mariupol.
Aerial footage pulses with digital circles
Fragmenting into outbursts of smoke
Above targets that had been theatres,
Had been hospitals, had been schools.
Meaning has sunk unfathomably below
Words, howling itself towards silence.
Paddy Bushe won The Irish Times Poetry Now Award for On a Turning Wing (Dedalus 2016). He is a member of Aosdána
