Op-Ed - A Holiday to End All Wars - NYTimes.com

TODAY is the 90th anniversary of the armistice that ended the First World War, and it will be commemorated very differently on each side of the Atlantic and across the borders of Europe. It’s a reminder that not all “victors” experience wars in the same way, and that their citizens can have almost as much difficulty as those of the vanquished states in coping with the collective trauma of conflict.

For Americans, Veterans Day celebrates the survivors of all the nation’s 20th and 21st century wars. In France and Britain, by contrast, the mood is altogether more somber. In these countries, it is the dead who, since 1919, have been the focus of the ceremonies.

Why this difference? After all, for citizens of all three countries the date marks a shared victory. In the jargon of the time, Nov. 11, 1918, was the day of their soldiers’ triumph over “Prussian militarism,” the vindication of a “fight for civilization” and the successful finish of a “war to end all wars.”

I wonder what it will really take to end all wars … why can’t the memories of tragedies past keep our world’s nations from continuing to wage battle causing countless meaningless deaths? Over what? Religion and ethnicity, primarily. Land, oil and money secondarily.

On this Veteran’s (or Armistice) Day, let’s take after our French and British brethren, and remember the dead, rather than celebrate the victory; for what have we won?

IN FLANDERS FIELDS

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly.
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

  — Lt. Col. John Alexander McCrae (1872 - 1918), Canadian soldier who died in Belgium, January 1918

SHADWELL STAIR

I am the ghost of Shadwell Stair.
       Along the wharves by the water-house,
       And through the cavernous slaughter-house,
I am the shadow that walks there.

Yet I have flesh both firm and cool,
       And eyes tumultuous as the gems
       Of moons and lamps in the full Thames
When dusk sails wavering down the pool.

Shuddering the purple street-arc burns
       Where I watch always; from the banks
       Dolorously the shipping clanks
And after me a strange tide turns.

I walk till the stars of London wane
       And dawn creeps up the Shadwell Stair.
       But when the crowing syrens blare
I with another ghost am lain.

BATS

Bats

unveil themselves in dark.
They hang, each a jagged,

silken sleeve, from moonlit rafters bright
as polished knives. They swim

the muddled air and keen
like supersonic babies, the sound

we imagine empty wombs might make
in women who can’t fill them up.

A clasp, a scratch, a sigh.
They drink fruit dry.

And wheel, against feverish light flung hard
upon their faces,

in circles that nauseate.
Imagine one at breast or neck,

Patterning a name in driblets of iodine
that spatter your skin stars.

They flutter, shake like mystics.
They materialize. Revelatory

as a stranger’s underthings found tossed
upon the marital bed, you tremble

even at the thought. Asleep,
you tear your fingers

and search the sheets all night.

Happy Halloween, everyone.

RISE AGAINST - RE-EDUCATION (THROUGH LABOR)

To the sound of a heartbeat pounding away
And the rhythm of the awful rusting machines
We toss and turn but don’t sleep
Each breath we take makes us thieves
Like causes without rebels
Just talk but promise nothing else

We crawl on our knees for you
Under the sky no longer blue
We sweat all day long for you
But we sow seeds to see us through
Because sometimes dreams just don’t come true
We wait to reap what we are due

To the rhythm of a time bomb ticking away
And the blare of the sirens combing the street
Chased down like dogs we run from
Your grasp until the sun comes up

We crawl on our knees for you
Under a sky no longer blue
We sweat all day long for you
But we sow seeds to see us through
Because sometimes dreams just don’t come true
Look now at what they’ve done to you

White needles buried in the red
The engine roars and then it gives
But never dies
Because we don’t live
We just survive
On the scraps that you throw away

I won’t crawl on my knees for you
I won’t believe the lies that hide the truth
I won’t sweat one more drop for you
‘Cause we are the rust upon your gears
We are the insect in your ears
And we crawl all over you

We sow seeds to see us through
Our days are precious and so few
We all reap what we are due
Under this sky no longer blue
We bring a dawn long overdue
We crawl all over you

MAY DAY

I’ve decided to waste my life again,
Like I used to: get drunk on
The light in the leaves, find a wall
Against which something can happen,

Whatever may have happened
Long ago—let a bullet hole echoing
The will of an executioner, a crevice
In which a love note was hidden,

Be a cell where a struggling tendril
Utters a few spare syllables at dawn.
I’ve decided to waste my life
In a new way, to forget whoever

Touched a hair on my head, because
It doesn’t matter what came to pass,
Only that it passed, because we repeat
Ourselves, we repeat ourselves.

I’ve decided to walk a long way
Out of the way, to allow something
Dreaded to waken for no good reason,
Let it go without saying,

Let it go as it will to the place
It will go without saying: a wall
Against which a body was pressed
For no good reason, other than this.

  — Phillis Levin, Professor of English at the University of Maryland

THE TROPICS OF NEW YORK

Bananas ripe and green, and ginger root
    Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,
And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit,
    Fit for the highest prize at parish fairs,

Sat in the window, bringing memories
    of fruit-trees laden by low-singing rills,
And dewy dawns, and mystical skies
    In benediction over nun-like hills.

My eyes grow dim, and I could no more gaze;
    A wave of longing through my body swept,
And, hungry for the old, familiar ways
    I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.

Claude McKay (1889 - 1948), Jamaican writer and poet.

NEW PORNOGRAPHERS - CHALLENGERS

Yes I know it was late
We were greeting the sun
Before long

And you live with someone
I live with somebody too
Leave it there

For safe keeping
One of the west village in plains
That was the custom
Come dawn

On the walls of the day
In the shade of the sun
We wrote down

Another vision of us
We were the challengers of
The unknown

“Be safe” you say
Whatever the mess you are, you’re mine, okay
If that is the custom
I’m down

Na-na na-na na-na na-na na-na
Na-na na-na na-na na-na na-na…

Until I see you around
Until we clear the accounts
Leave it there

Leave it to us
We are the challengers of
The unknown

Oh-la, oh-la, oh-la, oh-la
Oh-la, oh-la, oh-la, oh-la

Easter Morning

a stone at dawn
cold water in the basin
these walls’ rough plaster
imageless
after the hammering
of so much insistence
on the need for naming
after the travesties
that passed as faces,
grace: the unction
of sheer nonexistence
upwelling in this
hyacinthine freshet
of the unnamed
the faceless

  — Amy Clampitt (1920 - 1974), American poet. From The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt.