In Times of Love and Terror

[dedalus]

In Times of Love and Terror

 

A long decade and more

since Pearl Harbor in New York,

with the toppling buildings

and the death of innocents.

 

I have learned never to discuss

this day with American friends,

since they resent non-American curiosity

as to possible cause.

 

You just don’t

talk about that.

 

Now we have had the disintegration of Iraq,

with tens of thousands of deaths,

and all to what grand purpose:

revenge, resentment, a desire to strike?

 

Dusky, dark-skinned people

died all over the place,

and a fraction of the fallen

return to America in flag-draped coffins.

 

It seems so strange and unfair.

 

I think we need

to get used to the idea

that our present world, the one we live in,

is based on an absence of principle,

is obsessed by money and power.

 

I summon up Shakesperian ghosts

and call on long-dead Euripedes

to show us the honest way,

but they respond fom the grave

with rejection and dry laughter.

[Benjamin]

The genie is well and truly out of the bottle and yes: "It seems so strange and unfair" --- your last two stanzas provoke the cynic in me that says you can't put it back in the bottle any more than you can kill anyone deader than dead. G.

[dcmarti1]

It seems so strange nd unfair.

 

The only problem is the missing "a" in "and". (ha) This American has no problem with international discussion of the incident and its causes. Our politicians certainly are Trinitarians: Holy Capital, Holy Interest, and Holy Rents, all at the Altar of Consumerism.

 

I just fell off my soapbox. I will stop now.....

[Benjamin]

Perhaps marti, that's why Obama now appears to be a 'dead duck' president en-route to join Bren's "ghosts".

[David W. Parsley]

Don't stop. It's good to have a place where these things can be discussed, Americans and otherwise. The fact is that extremism has become much more prevalent than 30 years ago and more. Forgive me for not being fatalistic, but that would seem to be a phenomenon for which it would be helpful to find contributing root causes. And having found them, to determine long term corrective actions, using the lingo of my profession.

 

I like this piece, Bren. Where else are these things discussed so openly and with such grace of expression?

 

Thank You,

- Dave