poetry lamenting war #17
Apr. 5th, 2003 07:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyTO A TERRORIST
For the historical ache, the ache passed down
which finds its circumstance and becomes
the present ache, I offer this poem
without hope, knowing there's nothing,
not even revenge, which alleviates
a life like yours. I offer it as one
might offer his father's ashes
to the wind, a gesture
when there's nothing else to do.
Still, I must say to you:
I hate your good reasons.
I hate the hatefulness that makes you fall
in love with death, your own included.
Perhaps you're hating me now,
I who own my own house
and live in a country so muscular,
so smug, it thinks its terror is meant
only to mean well, and to protect.
Christ turned his singular cheek,
one man's holiness another's absurdity.
Like you, the rest of us obey the sting,
the surge. I'm just speaking out loud
to cancel my silence. Consider it an old impulse,
doomed to become mere words.
The first poet probably spoke to thunder
and, for a while, believed
thunder had an ear and a choice.
--Stephen Dunn, Between Angels. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1989.
LINKS:
I always link to the Academy of American Poets, don't I? Consider it a comfortable piece of ritual, and click here to check out their Stephen Dunn page, with the usual short biography and selection of links.
Here's the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey bragging on Dunn for winning the Pulitzer in 2001.
Norton Poets Online has a Stephen Dunn page with a nice bibliography.
For the historical ache, the ache passed down
which finds its circumstance and becomes
the present ache, I offer this poem
without hope, knowing there's nothing,
not even revenge, which alleviates
a life like yours. I offer it as one
might offer his father's ashes
to the wind, a gesture
when there's nothing else to do.
Still, I must say to you:
I hate your good reasons.
I hate the hatefulness that makes you fall
in love with death, your own included.
Perhaps you're hating me now,
I who own my own house
and live in a country so muscular,
so smug, it thinks its terror is meant
only to mean well, and to protect.
Christ turned his singular cheek,
one man's holiness another's absurdity.
Like you, the rest of us obey the sting,
the surge. I'm just speaking out loud
to cancel my silence. Consider it an old impulse,
doomed to become mere words.
The first poet probably spoke to thunder
and, for a while, believed
thunder had an ear and a choice.
--Stephen Dunn, Between Angels. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1989.
LINKS:
I always link to the Academy of American Poets, don't I? Consider it a comfortable piece of ritual, and click here to check out their Stephen Dunn page, with the usual short biography and selection of links.
Here's the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey bragging on Dunn for winning the Pulitzer in 2001.
Norton Poets Online has a Stephen Dunn page with a nice bibliography.
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no subject
Date: 2003-04-05 06:08 am (UTC)And you thought Garison Keillor was a fuddy duddy.
The poem is "Ode to Torpor," by Robert Sward from Heavenly Sex (Black Moss Press).
~~~
I posted this in my journal, but since I don't know if you read it, you might not see it. I thought you might be interested (if you have not seen it already).