Above all else we must to our own faith in truth, our truth, our lived life truth, be true or life ain’t worth a copper.
My truth is No More Genocide In My Name.
No excuse to not hold one with or without NAMES.
We might pick up where Bertrand Russell left off after all. Not even a Joe Rogan, a Tucker whatever, even the Senator’s son Paul by name will go to the nitty gritty. Too much at stake to think about it for these dudes. I doubt their intellectual ability. Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live.
What Were They Like?
Did the people of Viet Nam
use lanterns of stone?
Did they hold ceremonies
to reverence the opening of buds?
Were they inclined to quiet laughter?
Did they use bone and ivory,
jade and silver, for ornament?
Had they an epic poem?
Did they distinguish between speech and singing?
Sir, their light hearts turned to stone.
It is not remembered whether in gardens
stone gardens illumined pleasant ways.
Perhaps they gathered once to delight in blossom,
but after their children were killed
there were no more buds.
Sir, laughter is bitter to the burned mouth.
A dream ago, perhaps. Ornament is for joy.
All the bones were charred.
it is not remembered. Remember,
most were peasants; their life
was in rice and bamboo.
When peaceful clouds were reflected in the paddies
and the water buffalo stepped surely along terraces,
maybe fathers told their sons old tales.
When bombs smashed those mirrors
there was time only to scream.
There is an echo yet
of their speech which was like a song.
It was reported their singing resembled
the flight of moths in moonlight.
Who can say? It is silent now.
Levertov
What a wonderful column, Steigel! We need commissions like Russell's today so badly. They were earnest, good people. Is that Denise Levertov? Just magical weaving of words.
I remember chasing moths in the sideyard, in Detroit....if you did catch one, diving down, it would near turn to powder in your cupped hands....