The Perfect Anti-War Poem
Published February 14, 2003
My friend Rich Broderick invited me to an anti-war poetry reading at a St. Paul coffeehouse. I thought about anti-war poems for several days. What should they do, exactly?
Be against the war, of course. But what should happen when certain words are uttered in a room of people who, presumably, already agree on basic principles?
It is like me to get bollixed with basic questions at a time when everyone else is scurrying for their duct tape and rifles.
I mean, what good is a poem by some lowly person against a cruise missile, or an aircraft carrier, or Total Information Awareness?
And this feeling was borne out when I arrived and saw the crowd of mostly oldsters like myself, flying their freak flags the same as ever, only shinier.
I have written poems, especially when I was young, that use war, or have war in them. I typically exploited the horror, the feeling of helplessness, and the landscapes we leave when we give up on one another.
But I couldn't imagine any of these bad dream poems having a salutary effect on the peace gathering. So I dug up some old World war I poems of Wilfred Owen, "Strange Meeting" and "Dulce et Decorum Est," both harrowing poems written in his wartime "remission," when he invalided in England after succumbing to the noise and horror of bombs.
Before they dragged Owen away, he had sat gibbering in a hole for four days with the parts of a comrade splattered all around him.
The thing about Owen's poems is, they are so terribly bitter and sad. But I thought, as I looked out at the anti-war crowd, that we were all so old. I'm twice Owens' age, and Robert Bly, over there in the corner, is more than three Owens of time.
The war was so terrible, because it took a generation of men educated in genteel ways, and it ground them to puilp. They went off to war like gentlemen, and came back, if they were lucky, with a frankness of expression that was rooted in the greatest grief.
We today owe our freewheeling diction, our realism, to the horrors of the trenches. They gave us e.e. cummings and Hemingway, Robert Graves and Gertrude Stein (she worked as a nurse) ... Appolinaire, Cocteau, Eluard and Breton ... Isaac Rosenberg, Otto Dix and Eugenio Montale.
They gave us Robert Bridges, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, Joyce Kilmer, John Dos Passos, Edith Wharton (likewise a nurse), Archibald Macleish, Giuseppe Ungaretti, W. Somerset Maugham.
These people created a new language of straight talk from the rubble of the empires, which comes so easily to us today.
- The Perfect Anti-War Poem
- Published: February 14, 2003
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- Section: Books
- Filed Under: Books: Poetry
- Writer: Michael Finley
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"Pray before you fight"
http://nycap.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=5261
Pray before you fight,
pray before you make war,
don't care about the people,
dont know anything.
pray before you fight,
pray before you make war,
people are no people no more,
pretend nothing to know.
----
pray also to the devil,
don't care about human rights,
learn it from the german,
we are good students to.
pray before you fight,
ask jesus for permission,
people are no people
pretend nothing to know.
------
Pray before you fight,
pray before you make war,
don't care about the people,
dont know anything.
pray before you fight,
pray before you make war,
people are no people no more,
pretend nothing to know.
Spelling mistake!!!
Spelling mistake!!!
Spelling mistake!!!
Spelling mistake!!!
There are countless millions of souls
Congregating in thousands of bars
Drinking billions of drafts
While it is happy hour around the world
Watching war coverage on CNN
Making comments about how tragic
And bleak the world can be
And supporting the troops
And going home at night to our wives
And lives that exhaust us
Tomorrow we will wake up
And go to work
To the desk littered with papers,
Meaningless clutter symbolic of
this life; we answer emails
From far corners of the globe
As cluster bombs are dropped on Baghdad.
3-31-03
Chuck Patton
Miami, FL
Paul's Dad
He was buried with his secret, though really dead for years. Empty days consumed by grief, long nights awash in tears.
His son had finished high school, with no plan, no goal, just time. The boredom only deepened, soon replaced by petty crime.
Ten police upon the doorstep, with charges and arrest. A classic Dad's dilemma, what to do, what's best?
Restitution was an option, but with a military twist. All charges would be dropped, but his son must now enlist.
This father saw fair solution, now there'd finally be a plan. The Marines would help him grow, he'd never heard of Viet Nam.
And the decision that would haunt him, as he guided his young son's life. We'll keep this from your mother, and he never told his wife.
Instead, we'll tell her that you've chosen, gone from boy to man. You want to make us proud of you, you'll do the best you can.
So they covered up the truth, spoke of only pride and glory. No crime, no court, no record, they swept away the story.
And just a few months later, as Southeast Asia came aglow. His son't unit received orders, they were set to go.
A teen in jungle battle, a father sharing fear and dread. Landmines feasting on youth, three weeks later he was dead.
Neither righteousness of cause, nor valor of the attack, would ever make a difference. His son wasn't coming back.
He'd sent him off to mature, to live by schedules and clocks. They'd shipped him out to fight, sent his boy home in a box.
And once the war was over, his peace never came. He relived that decision daily, hollowed by grief and shame.
He'd used his best parental judgement, and watched it all go bad. Nothing was ever as painful, as the remorse of this childless dad.
For 17 years he shouldered alone, a guilt which offered no release. Until we buried him with his secret, and prayed that he'd found peace.
So not all the wounded bleed, some just find a private hell. All the while at home, he died but never fell.
And when he said some things are worse than death, you'd see pained truth in his eye. For he could never tell his wife the story, how he'd sent their son to die.
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Thank you for sharing your experience, Michael.
It is a good thing for people to gather together in this time of fear and uncertainty, reminding each other to celebrate poetry.