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Doesn't Take Much and That's Messed Up - 2004-03-15 |
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Jay Elias | You can take it with you
"I have wasted Time, and now doth
Time waste me"
- Richard II
2002-09-11- 2:32 a.m.
The Shadow Of The Valley
There are hundreds of people out there posting their recollections and feelings about today right now. Which seems a daunting number, and then one thinks about the thousands of journalists and television anchors who will be talking to you about today, and the tens of thousands of interviewees they will bring on, from politicians to firemen to psychologists to Tom Clancy. The likelihood is that between them all, they will say nearly everything, profound or otherwise, that there is to say.
There is the story of my September 11, 2001, which won’t be told today. It could be, I suppose; every New Yorker who was here that day has a tale to tell. But it doesn’t have any more significance than that of any of the stories that have been told already. The truth is, it probably has less.
And there is the most horrible truth: Two thousand eight hundred and twenty-three people at the World Trade Center who have no voice today. Another two hundred and sixty-six of the voiceless from aboard the hijacked planes. One hundred and eighty-nine who cannot tell us how they feel from the Pentagon. Their stories cannot be told, not on this day or on any other. In the face of that, I don’t know what I can say that matters.
I am forced, in short, to resort to those who are both wiser and greater than I. In the week that followed September 11, 2001, I saw this posted along with poems, cards, and photos on the door to the firehouse of Ladder Co. 18. It was written over sixty years before that fateful day, and yet seems as if it could have been written that very day. Part of me fears that means that little has changed, and we haven’t and cannot learn how to build a finer future. But part of me hopes, because as long as such ideas endure, there is the possibility that our Septembers need not always be times of tragedy and loss.
Sept. 1, 1939 – by W.H. Auden
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
We must love one another or die. My love, and my best wishes, to all of you and your families on this day, and every other.
Copyright © 2001, 2002 - EoZ
Productions
All Rights Reserved
If you want to make me
famous or just complain: Jay Elias -
jelias@diaryland.com
Older
Doesn't Take Much and That's Messed Up - 2004-03-15
Like Water Under Bridges - 2003-09-08
Jesus On The Dashboard - 2003-08-13
An Administrative Announcement - 2003-08-11
Don't Worry, It's Coming - 2003-08-02
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