Some months ago after a round of eye surgery I bought an IPad which magnifies print and “speaks” and then I joined Facebook. (Twitter too.)
When I open Facebook I’m always, always gratified to read what the poet Sam Hamill has to say. His posts and forwarded articles are “spot on” about the cruelties of imperial culture. Sam’s posts remind me that authentic outrage about the state of human rights can still abide in a land of self-amusements and idle chatter. Thank you, Sam.
In the age of “collateral damage” Sam tells us that there are children, men, women, all innocent, all sacrificed for the sake of imperial procedure. I no longer know the number–the official number–of civilians killed in the latest Iraq war but I know it’s well over 100,000.
And thank you Robert Bly for these lines from your poem “The Teeth Mother Naked at Last”–they are as true today as they were when you wrote them some forty years ago when the U.S. was slaughtering civilians in Viet Nam:
“Helicopters flutter overhead. The death-
bee is coming. Super Sabres
like knots of neurotic energy sweep
around and return.
This is Hamilton’s triumph.
This is the advantage of a centralized bank.
B-52s come from Guam. All the teachers
die in flames. The hopes of Tolstoy fall asleep in the ant heap.
Do not ask for mercy.”
**
The House of Representatives voted yesterday for a massive military budget. Has there ever been a greater need or a more pressing time for the United States to turn its swords into plowshares?
Robert Bly again:
“I know that books are tired of us.
I know they are chaining the Bible to chairs.
Books don’t want to remain in the same room with us anymore.”
S.K.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Planet of the Blind 