(Some jingles from a few years back)
Alas, Babylon
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.”
— “The Rubaiyat” Omar Khayyam, 12th century (trans. Edward Fitzgerald, 1859)
I
They are bombing
the poetry out of Iraq.
Who can write poems
when each one dead
is a dead poem?
Who can write
when even
the moving finger
stops, when
the wall has been bombed,
the handwriting lost?
Each one dead in Iraq
is a poem not written.
Iraq is filling with
dead poems.
They are bombing
the poetry out of Iraq.
In retaliation, the poetry of America
gives up its ghost,
ranting. A cold
moon over Babylon:
the poetry of America
drops its pants
on history.
II
Starting his Third-World
War, the president sends
his warheads –
Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice –
our appointed
war heads.
New Babylon
buries the old
for oil: blood
of Eden. Lost
where we found it,
exiled, buried
Eden. Living
off the bones
of our ancestors,
milking the black
blood of Eden
in our not-so-
original sin.
Drinking the blood of
Eden, drunk now
on the blood of war –
cut-rate Humvees
for the grunts, tricked-
out Hummers and SUVs
at home – it’s our
hangover. Every
drop counts, the
clock counting down...
["Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones."
— Donald Rumsfeld, Feb. 17, 2002]
Preaching to the Choir
It is not by your patriotism that you support
and spread the new imperialism –
global corporate empire-building.
It is not by your Pledge of Allegiance that you keep flags covering truth.
Not your vote or your note to the editor.
No need to buy your vote.
They have bought your life
with your burger and fries,
the SUV and one-car-per-person.
Not by just the sweatshop
cranking out Nikes overseas,
but the imported produce pickers,
house-cleaners, cooks, dishwashers –
those who clean up after us, do
our dirty work –
the nuts and bolts, tape & glue holding
our way of life together.
*****
2 comments:
Jiddu Krishnamurti;
“There are three monks, who had been sitting in deep meditation for many years amidst the Himalayan snow peaks, never speaking a word, in utter silence. One morning, one of the three suddenly speaks up and says, ‘What a lovely morning this is.’ And he falls silent again. Five years of silence pass, when all at once the second monk speaks up and says, ‘But we could do with some rain.’ There is silence among them for another five years, when suddenly the third monk says, ‘Why can’t you two stop chattering?”
http://www.katinkahesselink.net/kr/jokes.html
http://jiddukrishnamurti.multiply.com/photos/album/1/Jiddu_Krishnamurti.
http://seaunaluzparaustedmismo.blogspot.com/
Thank you, guzman, for commenting... and for K's parable. Yes.
Interestingly, K was/is my teacher, if any man can be said to be that. I was with him in the '70s and '80s.
You have a very nice-looking page of photographs of him. I regret I don't read Spanish well enough to follow along with your thoughts, but nonetheless I encourage you.
Post a Comment