After reading about all the furor surrounding the pope's address (which I read in it entirety, and did find demeaning), I decided to post one of my favorite poems of all time, by American poet, Thomas Lux (and he does bring light in poem to what seems to be an eternal and horrible truth)
THE PEOPLE OF THE OTHER VILLAGE
hate the people of this village
and would nail our hats
to our heads for refusing in their presence to remove them
or staple our hands to our foreheads
for refusing to salute them
if we did not hurt them first: mail them packages of rats,
mix their flour at night with broken glass.
We do this, they do that.
They peel the larynx from one of our brother's throats.
We devein one of their sisters.
The quicksand pits they built were good.
Our amputation teams were better.
We trained some birds to steal their wheat.
They sent to us exploding ambassadors of peace.
They do this, we do that.
We canceled our sheep imports.
They no longer bought our blankets.
We mocked their greatest poet
and when that had no effect
we parodied the way they dance
which did cause pain, so they, in turn, said our God
was leprous, hairless.
We do this, they do that.
Ten thousand (10,000) years, ten thousand
(10,000) brutal, beautiful years.
from SPLIT HORIZON, (Houghton Mifflin, 1994)
THE PEOPLE OF THE OTHER VILLAGE
hate the people of this village
and would nail our hats
to our heads for refusing in their presence to remove them
or staple our hands to our foreheads
for refusing to salute them
if we did not hurt them first: mail them packages of rats,
mix their flour at night with broken glass.
We do this, they do that.
They peel the larynx from one of our brother's throats.
We devein one of their sisters.
The quicksand pits they built were good.
Our amputation teams were better.
We trained some birds to steal their wheat.
They sent to us exploding ambassadors of peace.
They do this, we do that.
We canceled our sheep imports.
They no longer bought our blankets.
We mocked their greatest poet
and when that had no effect
we parodied the way they dance
which did cause pain, so they, in turn, said our God
was leprous, hairless.
We do this, they do that.
Ten thousand (10,000) years, ten thousand
(10,000) brutal, beautiful years.
from SPLIT HORIZON, (Houghton Mifflin, 1994)
posted by mariestaad at 4:22 PM
2 Comments:
Good point, Trevor. I think that Lux is just pointing out the brutality and the pettiness of some wars--those that cover generations. The back and forth bickering over long quarrels that some have even forgot the origins of. You are experiencing some of that in Iraq right now between Sunni & Shiite extremists, the horrible bind and torture militia killings.
Same goes for the sectarian wars in Nothern Ireland. Just like the Sunnis & Shiites have more in common than they do in differences, the same goes for Catholics and Protestants (and I know that these battles are often not over religion, per se, but that's how they started).
Good to see you here again! I like your always sensible posts. My students are now visiting your blog (and others) for a paper on "Blogs and Warfare" or how war in covered on blogs. They might ask you a question or two--I hope you don't mind.
No doubt, that's horrific. But also read about the Spanish Inquisition, and its treatment (especially in the British Isles) of "heretics." My personal favorite is drawing and quartering--where the Inquisitors would hang a person until he (it was usually reserved for men) was nearly dead, then cut open his abdomen, pull out his intestines (while he was still alive) and burn them in front of him. And if that wasn't enough, then they would put a rope around each of his limbs, attach the ropes to horses, and whip the horses so they would run and literally pull the poor "heretic" apart. Ugh. I'd almost rather have the nail in the brain. . .
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