Apologies

Apologies

In his sleep, your father tears
at the skin rash he's been growing sinced World War II
when he ducked and covered
a few miles from Bikini Atoll. "Voluntary Duty",

he tells us. "I got to go home
a few months early." A half-century later
he curses the suggestion that we owe Japan
an apology for Nagasaki and Hiroshima. How is it

our own pain becomes feed
for anger, then fear and worst
a desperate logic
that justifies every piece of war? Memories

fall out from the attic
of history: the photograph
of a mummified Vietnamese soldier's skull
perched like a crazy ass scarecrow

on an American tank in '66 or '67
or whenever, this personal monument
designed by kids only minutes away
from high school football games. Of course

there is the other photograph
of another dark-skinned enemy, Bigfoot
the Minniconjou chief, frozen solid
in the snow of Wounded Knee, one hand

reaching toward the camera, a gesture
that would have looked staged today
but in 1876 it meant he died
with questions, but your father lives now

with you and I live now
together. All of us fake ceremonies
who feel dirty and used
when we wake late

for a morning shower or watch
the evening news. It's true.
All day, we check our hair
in mirrors and mumble silent

apologies for the ordinary.
We say "Excuse me" to the fast food cashier
when our dollar bills are wrinkled
and "I'm sorry" to the tailor

measuring across our body
because of the proximity of our hearts.
Jesus, these apologies begin
with a whisper, then

become a war. Open your eyes
and force yourself out of bed
to face breakfast and work and the faces
of men and women who've been destroyed

by bullets and cocks and fists and hunger
but just like all of us and none of us
because it happens universally
it doesn't get noticed. So what to do?

Print up newspaper headlined PAIN
and bury all the apologies
in the classified ads? Raise money, dance
until exhaustion, drink, drugs, poetry?

I hate it all
and when your father curses the suggestion
that we owe the Japanese
any apology for Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I want

to tell him "It's all right
I understand" but I also want to strip him naked
and take photographs of his diseased skin
and I want to throw your father out the door

into the wheat fields, now snow fields
then killing fields. It happens that way:
violence changes the names of things.
Suddenly, at the STOP sign

I idle
in my car at the railroad crossing
as the train divides
the world into two halves: me

on this side with my predictable rage
and constant apologies
for the little things (I felt bad
this morning because I couldn't find the car keys.)

and your father on the other side
singing loudest at church and storming
into silence when his heart is questioned.
Both of us love you

arrogantly and crazily, without apology.


Sherman Alexie.........from The First Indian In The Moon