Racism- On the Subway by Sharon Olds

The boy and I face each other.

His feet are huge, in black sneakers

laced with white in a complex pattern like a

set of intentional scars.  We are stuck on

opposite sides of the car, a couple of

molecules stuck in a rod of light

rapidly moving through darkness.  He has the

casual cold look of a mugger,

alert under hooded lids.  He is wearing

red, like the inside of the body

exposed.  I am wearing dark fur, the

whole skin of an animal taken and

used.  I look at his raw face,

he looks at my fur coat, and I don’t

know if I am in his power-

he could take my coat so easily, my

briefcase, my life-

or if he is in my power, the way I am

living off his life, eating the steak

he does not eat, as if I am taking

the food from his mouth. And he is black

and I am white, and without meaning or

trying to I must profit from his darkness,

the way he absorbs the murderous beams of the

nation’s heart, as black cotton

absorbs the heat of the sun and holds it. There is

no way to know how easy this

white skin makes my life, this

life he could take so easily and

break across his knee like a stick the way his

own back is being broken, the

rod of his soul that at birth was dark and

fluid and rich as the heart of a seedling

ready to thrust up into any available light.

How often have we been in this situation? Either side of this situation? The uneasy feeling that our safety is at risk simply because the person standing across from us is dressed a certain way, has a color of skin different than our own. As time goes by and nothing happens this woman begins to examine her feelings and discovers that this is not about what he can take from her but, quite possibly about what she has already taken from him. She didn’t mug him or rob him on his way home from work but she knows that indirectly her action have contributed to the condition he lives in. She acknowledges the blessings in her life as she looks at a boy who was born to struggle. Born with the black skin that would always bring suspicious looks from those who had something they believed he wanted to take. Things that were so much easier to acquire simply because the color of their skin was white.

Aggression- The Measures Taken by Erich Fried

The Measures Taken by Erich Fried

The lazy are slaughtered
the world grows industrious

The ugly are slaughtered
the world grows beautiful

The foolish are slaughtered
the world grows wise

The sick are slaughtered
the world grows healthy

The sad are slaughtered
the world grows merry

The old are slaughtered
the world grows young

The enemies are slaughtered
the world grows friendly

The wicked are slaughtered
the world grows good

The writer of this poem was an Austrian Jew who fled the country after his father's beating death by the Gestapo.  His first hand experience with brutal loss is reflected in the words of this poem.  The word slaughter represents a bloody, messy way to end the lives of those who are less desirable.  Less desirable to whom is the question I ask myself. I can identify my self in at least three of these lines as I read them today.  Maybe I could be identified in all of these lines depending the judge. And isn't that what is being said in this poem?  When I think about the destruction of people and the reasons given, so simple in the mind of the destroyer.  Fried uses only eight examples yet it is unlikely that any readers can not get through this poem without seeing themselves in one of them. Lazy and foolish are the only two words he uses that are possibilities for change. Destroying lives based on sadness during wartime would cause endless destruction. Ugly, sick, sad, wicked and enemies are all descriptions of war, are all created by war.  In the end the fighting and choices made only produce what the aggressors in war-time seek to destroy.

What we learn- The Rite of Passage by Sharon Olds

As the guests arrive at my son's party
as they gather in the living room-
short men, men in first grade
with smooth jaws and chins.
Hands in pockets, they stand around
jostling, jockeying for place, small fights
breaking out and calming. One says to another
How old are you? Six. I'm seven. So?
They eye each other, seeing themselves
tiny in the other's pupils. They clear their
throats a lot, a room of small bankers,
they fold their arms and frown. I could beat you
up, a seven says to a six,
the dark cake, round and heavy as a
turret, behind them on the table. My son,
freckles like specks of nutmeg on his cheeks,
chest narrow as the balsa keel of a
model boat, long hands
cool and thin as the day they guided him
out of me, speaks up as a host
for the sake of the group.
We could easily kill a two year old,
he says in his clear voice. The other
men agree, they clear their throats
like Generals, they relax and get down to
playing war, celebrating my son's life.

The first birthday party when a young boy invites friends rather than just family.  As the mother of this young boy watches the interactions she is for the first time confronted with the aggressive urges that a male child feeds into while surrounded by his male peers.  These boys are not babies anymore and perhaps this is the first time she has considered this fact as she reflects on the birth of her baby.  She describes his youthful, and innocent appearance followed by his claim that he could "kill a two year old" and the initiation of "playing war".  Mother's who have son's engaging in real-time war games will always remember their son with "specks of nutmeg on his cheeks". Male children have "played" war for years and this poem expresses the irony felt while allowing this practice and secretly hoping the reality of war never touches the life of a child.  The final line could be more ironic, "playing war, celebrating my son's life."

War-Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!- An ecstacy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
 But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in a fire or lime..
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devils sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To the children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori

The horror of war as can only be described by someone witnessing it.  These words deny the romantic stories told by those encouraging young men to fight in a war and sacrifice one's only life. Owen starts off by describing in painful detail the discomforts of the mission, "cursing through sludge", men "had lost their boots" but continued to march for the promise rest somewhere in the near future.  The promise was soon not certain as they were attacked and a gas bomb was dropped, panic ensued.  The writer describes what he witnesses as one of the men cannot get his mask on quickly enough and suffocates as he watches helplessly. He recognizes in this moment the lie about the honor of giving you life for your country. It's ugly and vile, he looks at the man's blank stare and hears the sounds in his lungs as the gas continues to poison them after his death. He decides that it is not, "sweet and fitting to die for one's country."

Grief- The Names by Billy Collins

The Names by Billy Collins

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.

A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,

And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,

I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,

Then Baxter and Calabro,

Davis and Eberling, names falling into place

As droplets fell through the dark.

Names printed on the ceiling of the night.

Names slipping around a watery bend.

Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.

In the morning, I walked out barefoot

Among thousands of flowers

Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,

And each had a name-

Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal

Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.

Names written in the air

And stitched into the cloth of the day.

A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.

Monogram on a torn shirt,

I see you spelled out on a storefront windows

And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.

I say the syllables as I tirn a corner-

Kelly and Lee,

Medina, Nardella, and O’Connor.

When I peer into the woods,

I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden

As in a puzzle concocted for children.

Parker and Quigly in the twigs of an ash,

Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,

Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.

Names written in the pale sky.

Names rising in the updrift among buildings.

Names silent in stone.

Or cried out behing a door.

Names blown over the earth and out to sea.

In the evening-weakening light, the last swallows.

A boy on a lake lifts his oars.

A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,

 And the names are outlined on the rose clouds-

Vanacore and Wallace,

(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfounf)

Then young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.

Names etched on the head of a pin.

One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.

A blue name needled in the skin.

Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,

The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.

Alphabet of names in a green field.

Names on the small tracks of birds.

Names lifted from a hat

Or balanced on the tip of a tongue.

Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.

So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

I feel grief when I read this poem, the grief of a nation and the personal grief of the people who lost someone on September 11, 2001.  The beginning of this poem talks of a soft rain, like the tears came a year later when this poem was written. These tears were not as frantic and terrifying as the year before. These tears were softer and slower but no less painful as the writer gives names to the people and the realization that these were not  just“victims” of a terrorist attack. These were people who were part of a life they left behind.  Mothers and fathers and children go on in their own separate spaces feeling a heartache that will never end.  The names will haunt the places where they lived their lives and where their lives ended.  The beauty returning as the The World Trade Center disaster has been cleaned away from our sight, we still see them as we look around a world that will never be the same.

What War takes- People by Yevgeny Yevtushenko

No people are uninteresting.

Their fate is like a chronicle of planets.

Nothing in them is not particular,

and planet is dissimilar from planet.

And if a man lived in obscurity

making his friends in that obscurity

obscurity is not uninteresting.

To each his world is private,

and in the world one excellent minute.

And in that world one tragic minute.

These are private.

In any man who dies there dies with him

his first snow and kiss and fight.

It goes with him.

They are left books and bridges

and painted canvas and machinery.

Whose fate is to survive.

But what has gone is also nothing:

by the rule of the game something has gone.

Not people die but worlds die in them.

Whom we knew as faulty, the earth creatures.

Of whom, essentially, what did we know?

Brother of brother?   Friend of friends?

Lover of lover?

We who knew our fathers

in everything,  in nothing.

They perish.    They cannot be brought back.

The secret worlds are not regenerated.

And every time again and again

I make my lament against destruction.

People starts out by stating that "no people are uninteresting" a fact I believe to be true. All individuals are complex; all have aspects that are not revealed simply by the color of their skin, their geographical location or the God they choose to worship. We keep it to ourselves and possibly even prefer it that way. When a man is killed in the name of the "cause" it allows disconnect from the truth. A reality that in fact it is not a troop, an innocent by stander, terrorist, freedom fighter, gang member, drug dealer, prostitute, Muslim, Christian, Jew, black man or white woman. When a person loses their life to unnecessary violence, the human they were, the existence they knew and world they experienced is gone forever. What is left behind- their material world as they created it. It is real and possibly permanent. What has died will never be again and what they have lost is also our loss. What Yevshenko says so well with the words in people- If we closed the gap between our actions of destruction to feel the reality of the people behind this destruction- the life, a love, the opportunities to change the world we would likely be unable to kill People.

War- Grass by Carl Sandburg

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work-
        I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
        What place is this?
         Where are we now?

          I am the grass.
          Let me work.

These wars and the people, the bodies, human lives buried under the ground, covered by grass.  Have we forgotten our mistakes Sandburg asks in this poem?  What lessons have we learned from the loss?  The grass grows doing it's job covering our faults and our shame of the wars that have taken people from this earth.
We are only happy to allow the grass to cover our denial of the truth. There are many  lives lost as he refers to 'pile them high" and let the grass cover the shame of our sin in killing so many innocent. Questioning what this has brought us, there is no answer given, only the continued denial of the piles and piles of lives that were lost.  The writer's bigger message is about forgetting our history will only lead us to repeating tragic mistakes for which people paid for with their lives.