I ran across these two poems recently and am running them both again because they are very similar in tone and content. Please notice the dates, three days before the Iraq war began. Obviously all the wise men went mute.



Monday, 17 March 2003

THERE HAS TO BE A BETTER WAY
By Jim Kittelberger

When I was so very young
white was white and black was black
right was right and wrong was wrong.

When I was so very young and words would fail
when young pride alone remained,

shins would be kicked
and noses would be punched,

Until finally
bruised and tired
the dust would settle
and we'd be friends again
no harm done
or so we said.

As the years went by
we learned the value of words,
the power of words,
those mind-opening, world changing
powerful words.

All through life
words brought us love,
and riches. Words could
create great enterprises,
convince the masses to
try this or try that
taste this or taste that
drive this instead of that.

Then why can't we use those powerful
words amongst nations to find
a path to peace?
Why can't we find the time?
Where are our great minds? Our magnificent orators?

Is the equation too hard?

I grieve for all the parents who will soon be asking
why did my son,
my daughter have to die?
Not to be able to see another beautiful sunrise,
or sunset;
to know the peace and serenity of growing old;
having had time to sample all that is good under
Gods beautiful sky,

Because we could not take the time to talk
and perhaps reason to find another way.

Life is worth the words.


Saturday, 15 March 2003

Yvor Winters comparing countries to car traffic written in the thirties. and very apt for today with countries preparing, it seems, for inevitable war.

Courtesy of Robert Pinter.

BEFORE DISASTER

Evening traffic homeward burns
Swift and even on the turns,
Drifting weight in triple rows,
Fixed relation and repose.
This one edges out and by,
Inch by inch with steady eye.
But should error be increased,
Mass and moment are released;
Matter loosens, flooding blind,
Levels drivers to its kind.
Ranks of nations thus descend,
Watchful, to a stormy end.
By a moment's calm beguiled,
I have got a wife and child.
Fool and scoundrel guide the State.
Peace is whore to Greed and Hate.
Nowhere may I turn to flee:
Action is security.
Treading change with savage heel,
We must live or die by steel.


My comments are not so much on the poem, which I think is very much in tune with todays approaching war, which I hope and pray does not come. The United Nations is taking a bad rap because they cannot agree to agree with our countries reasoning. But that is what the UN was started for, to talk and talk and compromise and talk some more instead of going to war. It is doing that even though we don't agree with all that is going on. Talk, boring talk, is better than war and death. Ask the parents of the young people who will have to fight this war which they would choose.