Ground Zero, Sierra Leone

The man on the radio with the pleasant
colonial accent says Please understand we are grateful
for the five ambulances but we have lost fifty

nurses and just this week our fourth physician
and so we must be careful and also brutally
honest: this aid is a splash in a deep red sea.

I remember the young American
who said of returning to the mountainside
clinic he’d founded in the mining district

while still a medical student Coming back
it felt like I was jumping off a cliff.
In the accompanying photograph Dr. Dan

wears a spacesuit and fears
he looks inhuman. Meanwhile, on CNN
they are airing a clip from the latest beheading.

Another masked man with a sharp and polished
accent. For all the trembling it strikes me
the blade waiting in that clenched left hand

is smaller than expected, and also positively
radiant. I wonder how many could stand
in front of scenes like these and pretend

that death doesn’t linger like mountains
that their mouths aren’t filling with tin
that blood lines are more than blade-thin.