The Evil That We Do

Dear Family, Friends, and Colleagues,



As a promise to myself in retirement I have been watching great films I missed the first time around.  Last night it was Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremburg, which has a timeliness for today's war-morality issues despite its grounding in World War II and early Cold War politics. 

Granting wars by nature are fairly nasty affairs, the Nuremburg court instead was charged to bring justice in the special matter of "war crimes." (As if making war itself escapes the scope of crime--like maybe it's just an extension of diplomacy by dramatic means).  Ostensibly trying to assess responsibility of civilian leadership for the Holocaust, the drama repeatedly reveals more than enough wrongdoing to go around and examines the hypocrisy inherent in winners judging losers.

While the justices in question formulate verdicts and sentences appropriate to their best thinking--with even one of the defendants agreeing to their decision--the world has moved on. A reversal of enemy and ally occurs when the Soviet Union institutes the blockade of West Berlin. American authorities realize they must eventually restore at least West Germany to the status of European military power to maintain a balance on the continent. They urge the justices to soften judgments and sentences to the requirements of Realpolitick.

The American justice (Spencer Tracy) has been honestly trying to ascertain all of the factors confronting the German judges under Nazi rule. Finally he determines that, however much they sought to limit the abuses of the Nazis, by knowingly cooperating with them in the sterilization or execution of even one innocent, the German judges had opened the door to the slaughter of millions.

I found it a compelling drama, something like a meditation on what happens to us as we cooperate in any way with evil, tempted by the prospect (as usual) of accomplishing even greater good. The same topic challenges us today in many ways.

We use a somewhat sloppy "targeted killing" technique (drone warfare) in which we "take out" (date? No, murder.) people maybe only suspected of plotting terror against us. If we kill anyone else with them we assure ourselves they deserved it for hanging around with suspected terrorists. We don't never kill no innocents. Besides war is war and that's allowed, right? Better them than us, right? Anyway my country right or wrong.

We maintain an enormous supply of weapons which cannot be used morally in any sense. In this I agree with the Iranian Islamic authorities who hold atomic weapons as inherently immoral. Yet we keep them, underscoring our very credible threat to use them. We are the only nation which has used them. Doesn't that make us the most monstrous terrorists in the world?

Then there's that sticky problem of torture. President Obama said we have forbidden the use of torture. But we haven't given up rendering our prisoners to nations who haven't got our good manners. "Look forward not back," he said. If we did look back, would we stop with Bush II, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld? Or might we have to look at Clinton, Bush I, Reagan, Carter, et cetera?

It appears we have a longer history of waterboarding than we'd like to think: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175653/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_the_hidden_history_of_water_torture/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=d0fecba228-TD_Turse

Love, Peace, and Hope,

James Manista

PS: I have begun blogging at Blogger under the title The Whole Truth and Nothing But. Most of what I've posted so far are earlier writings. When I get through that stash I'll switch to more of postings like this.

Farewell to an Unrequited Love

Mr. Beau, Mr. Beau, wherever did you go 

That day you boldly bolted through the door?

Was it toward the ravine that you would last be seen

Or did your mighty mewing mellow bellow

 viewing four-lane Monticello

As you set forth the world to explore?

I’m sure your mistress called, for she was sorely galled

That you again would leave your home so fine.

Why ever did you spurn her call for your return? 

With no itinerary, and being so contrary,

Running out, you knew you crossed the line.

Holy Joe, Mr. Beau, it’s likely none will ever know

How you spent those weeks away from your life charmed.

Though often she out loud staunchly disavowed caring for your proud

         style of feisty faring, secretly, I fear, she surely shed a tear

And sleepless tossed you might be lost or harmed.

Bless the author then who wrote with discordant pen the note

That caused her pause to look up from her reading.

Bless the craftsman who thought the garage could use a view

And placed a window where your filthy face could stare

Out at your mistress walking, weeding

But bless that moment most she spied your gaunt gray ghost

Behind that foggy, cobwebbed glass,

For all your desperate screech you could never hope to breach 

The siding or the door. Nor could your clawless tapping

Come to more than soundless slapping, though you were

no longer keen on hiding there alas!

Poor Beau, you have no choice but to listen to her voice,

And if she calls, “Come here,” go there.  Don’t dare

Take another chance on some wandering romance.

Don’t roam; keep your keister close to home. While

Cats’ rumored lives are many, you quite likely haven’t any

left to spare.

Now feast, you scrawny beast, and after you have dined,

Go forth and find your mistress in her chair.

Leap into her lap but before you curl to nap

Stretch up to her face, use your tuna-tongue to place

A raspy kiss of thanks upon her cheek so fair.

And so, dear Beau, it’s come my time to go,

Although I fear it is a grave mistake.

Her happiness comes first; for me that means the worst.

Her arms, her lips, her croak (she’d joke), her eyes, her face—

All these lovely things, and you, my furry friend, I now forsake.
        c. 2002

On Poetry

As long as I this pleasant voice enjoy

What beauty I perceive I will relate

Though diction out-of-date I may employ

To probe the range this wretched tongue can state.

Modern writers may castigate my rhyme

And flay my lines’ familiar metered pace.

Their subtler ears reject all listening time.

Their meager journals grant no welcome space

Where to record my songs so clear and plain

Which full disclose their contents patently,

Grasped both by learned and by humble brain,

From symbols, cant, and obscure reference free.

This prayer, half chant, my apologia light,

I wrote to put the path of poems right.

c 1986

This wretched age that mocks all metered rhyme

Prefers to heave a half of brick than speak

Its love and can’t commit beyond the night

Deserves its reams of railing, fearful rant

I’ll favor then eternity for time

And build with words rejected as too weak

This monument to lasting love despite

The work of making music’s balanced chant.

Not every conscious moment counts the same

But judgment gleans the stream for order’s form

And in the good perceived the will delights.

Except your love’s first easy blush full fade

And be revived throughout life’s changing storm,

Call it not love, nor ever claim love’s heights.

c. 1986

Loki, Hadley Zenobia, and I

Curly fake-furred wriggly bag of bones,

Puppy skin so thin his vital ticking outclicks my own.

Fearfully four times I palm that fragile chest,

Wobble downstairs in the dark

Attach a lifeline, send him out

To steam an urgent thimbleful in snow.

In my arm’s crook I cradle my pink-swathed

First grandchild as I did her father years ago.

Named for England’s green and rolling hills

And an ancient Syrian warrior-queen.

Her frame too soft to swing a sword,

Last night her voice could rouse an army.

Despite a forehead daubed with Wednesday’s grit,

“Remember, man, that thou art dust,” somberly intoned,

In this night of earnest closed-eye prayer

I cannot draw a humbled breath.  This life instilled

Warmed guarded so exceeds the dry cold stone

Instead I sense the hand that holds me.

c 2006

And If I Said

And if I said “I love you” far too much

And made of it a pallid phrase like “Pass the salt”

Please try to understand my days fly now

On desperation’s edge an inch away from loss’s tears.

And if I tried to kiss you far too much

And grew as noisome as a bee’s recurrent hum

Please try to understand your sweet soft lips’ warm breath

Broke my time’s dizzy spin to calm’s eternal pause.

And if I sought to love you far too much

A thrall to some sick hunger, forgetful

Of our flesh’s many elegant repasts

Please try to understand my body’s fetters fell

The first you took me in your clasp

And breathing free a while

I ran my race to you.

                           c  1995

Carpe Diem

A day will be when we will be forgot--

Not just you and me but Caesar, Genghis Khan,

And Hitler, too. This, long before the sun,

Red Giant, melts all flesh, consumes the dot

That was our home and grave. The darkest stains

On history’s page will fade sure as papers

Curl, books burn, and nitrates in celluloid

Explode. Even the bytes degrade, I’m told.

No careful crafted rhyme ensures your cheek,

So cool, will live again once all scholars

Of the ancient tongues expire without heir.

Only the past we etch forever here.

Then with fire, fury, fill this transient be,

Lest gone too soon, it wants eternally.

c 2005

In Memory of Evan Rhys

These are the stairs my son told me

Where Evan Rhys that fateful day

Had wandered from his parents’ side

Took flight and fell to certain death

The day he died the angels cried

The children’s acting company

Relates he stretched to catch a toy

That rolled away beyond his reach

No piping stopped his playful try

He lost his balance at the breach

A moment’s lapse oh who knows how

That tot was in the hands of God

And gravity once friendly force

Now freely worked its fatal course

And drew him to the door of doom

Oh weeping mom oh mournful dad

Who knelt on bloody concrete gray

There to behold their broken boy 

And wait upon his final breath

Forsaking ever any joy

How often had they dandled him

And tossed him high to be a bird

With kisses smeared this laughing child

Returned assured to parent’s grasp

And learned to love the air so mild

The past is rich with future’s signs

Which looking back we clearly read

His father’s fall from Melville’s mast

Each night foretold these dire lines

So tragically are actors cast

A poster showed his father’s leap

As Ariel balletic sprite

Who hung in air to this tyke’s eye

So having learned at one to walk

At two had Evan will to fly

And know the pain that later played

In saddened scene where lines were laid

To speak of hurling babe outside

A window twenty stories high

The knowing audience would gasp

Some years have passed since the event

Now girders guard the precipice

Lest child and air again embrace

Still Evan’s plight replays for me

A meditative mystery

Of every child whose tragic end

Has etched upon my memory

And stirred that deep parental fear

Why some will die and others live

I father four who yet survive

A man in Florida once took

His little tad to see the zoo

There lost him to the reptile pit

Where nature red in tooth and claw

Mistook him for an early meal

Not Solomon in all his wit

Could tell him wrest or stay his hand

To save that screaming mangled lad

From crushing of primeval maw

As father fought survival’s law

Poor David Toma must have felt

Exuberant for having saved

A child from choking on the beat

At dinnertime with family safe

His hero’s deed he proudly told

But little David five years old

As tale unwound began to gag

The errant food would not dislodge

His second miracle denied

By hour’s end his son had died

City manager Robinson

Who kept his family with a gun

From robbers’ thieves’ intruders’ threat

Came home to find a young son dead

A bullet blasted through his head

His youngsters thought to have some fun

But chanced to play unwisely rough

With weapon hid not well enough

And thus was his intent to save

Perverted to an early grave

Whose call was Abraham answering

When he placed Isaac on the logs

And plotted out his dagger’s plunge

But then was spared the final test

Of giving up his only son

What kind of God is this who thrives

On slaughter of the innocents

Who quakes the earth releases plagues

Who buries babes who rots their blood

Makes bellies burst deprived of food

If parents’ tears were joined withal

What torrent were that waterfall

Yet never calm the waking brain

Nor ever wash away the pain

Nor ever drown discovery’s shriek

How Reason’s god untroubled stands

Apart from that which he creates

His vistas grand enthrall the eye

From desert’s bleak unending sand

To snow-whipped Himalayan peaks

He dies in grandeur but alone

Whose luckless step finds the crevasse

The numbing cold’s creator’s touch

As certainly all life retakes

As drifting snows erase all tracks

Were this the sum of my belief

I would not even dare to write

For fear such lines respark a grief

Which sunders all for man and wife 

Who bear that costly loss of life

I won’t accept a universe

Were providence statistical

Where life succeeds God’s prodigal

Supplying an excess of seeds

To outrun death’s consuming curse

Nor can a God be so perverse

To raise our hopes then dash them down

Destroy his sons so casually

Thus to ensure his single throne

And so unseat his children’s pride

Nor can he be an artisan

Who loses sight of his own work

Who crafts a piece and spins it off

Like gesture made and then forgot

For even we care more than that

The God who marks the sparrow’s fall

And numbers hairs upon our heads

Has not abjured the shadow’s path

But learned instead all flesh can feel

Of suffering pain loss and death

So come to comfort parents all

And hear the words of timeless love

Your anger he will not reprove

Who can your tortured dream relieve

Who can your shattered lives restore

He taught us humbly how to live

To honor first our father’s love

To give ourselves for others’ care

And faced for us what freedom brought

That vortex of destructive naught

Some followed him who worshipped power

Eager to sit beside his throne

In powers’ courts he power disowned

When terror struck they quickly fled

For with our weakness he allied

Was ever one more innocent

Who was accused confined abused

He healed the sick they tore his flesh

The sightless saw he hung for hours

What wrong deserved his horrid death

Then shook the earth with Father’s sobs

The darkened sky portrayed his gloom

His anger tore the temple door

Revealed how more alike we are 

Than different for dying sons

And swaddled in the final cloth 

At end he lay within a tomb

As borrowed as his cradle was

The fish the bread the wine now gone

His flock from purple wolf now hid

Then from the grave that rotted heart

Of evil’s hellish deep design

To glory rose the promised one

The king of our eternal spring

To reign in never-ending life

The world’s renewed because he rose

All evil’s triumph is undone

All which was lost shall be restored

The dumb shall sing the lame will dance

The hungry thrive the dead shall live

And in a children’s last crusade

Where every child who died too soon

Will to their parents’ arms parade

Evan in glory whole will rise

To wipe the teardrops from their eyes

Though earth still feels the shadow’s chill

When heaven’s sun we are denied

Through evil loss or our own will

Still time’s deceit cannot defeat

The light eternity has won

Make answer then to tragedy

By hope the unseen good we see

Not knowing how but through belief

Accepting seeds which bear the fruit

To bring our sorrowed souls relief

Oh weeping mom oh mournful dad

Who knelt on bloody concrete gray

Arise arise behold your boy

Forgive forgive your aching hearts

And live and live and know his joy

c 1986 J. S. Manista

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