How can one be silent in the face of such ignoble cruelty? How can one just turn away as if it wasn’t happening, as if I weren’t responsible, as if I didn’t care.
for the innocent in Gaza,
the Occupied Territories,
and throughout the world
How does one respond to such destruction
with a poem? Can poetry outweigh
a 2,000-pound Mark-84 bomb,
save the life of a single wounded child,
put an end to the hatred and madness
and inhumanity of those who do
the butchery? Might just as well be
pissing up a rope as thinking poetry
can matter where it really counts
there among the dead and dying,
armless, legless, homeless, starving,
families shattered, orphaned children,
misery without hope of ever ending.
And here I sit in safety half a world
away. My tax dollars buying bombs
my government supplies to those who
do the killing. How can one be silent
in the face of such ignoble cruelty?
How can one just turn away as if
it wasn’t happening, as if I weren’t
responsible, as if I didn’t care.
I suppose I could refuse to pay
my taxes, get myself arrested
doing civil disobedience
in front of Independence Hall,
write letters to my representatives
in Congress. But we’ve done all that
and more for more than half a century
and yet the killing just goes on and on.
One finds it hard, indeed impossible,
to dodge concluding that humanity
is, taken on the whole, just inhumane,
stark raving mad, beyond redemption.
I’d like to think I’m wrong, but this poem
is all the evidence that I can offer.
