+ For the past five days, a new poem by Gunter Grass has been causing a furor throughout Europe and Israel. The NY Times writes:
Today Israel has banned the poet from travelling to the land of the law and the prophets - and Jesus - and the prophet Mohamed (blessed be his name.) Hmmm... on the day after the Christian celebration of the victory of grace over karma perhaps even the past sins of Grass must be given a context, yes? As one writer notes, "truth is not anti-semitism." At the same time, as Amy-Jill Levine reminded us when she lectured in December, we must not hold Israel to higher standards than we demand of ourselves. Still, methinks Grass is on to something... here's the poem for your own review.
*
Why have I been silent, silent for so long?,
Our generals have gamed it out,
Confident the west will survive.
We people have not even been considered.
Confident the west will survive.
We people have not even been considered.
What is this right to “preventive war”?
A war that could erase the Iranian people.
Dominated by it’s neighbor, pulsing with righteousness
Smug in the fact that it is they, not Iran,
Who have the Bomb.
Why have I so far avoided to identify Israel by it’s name?,
Israel and it’s ever increasing nuclear arsenal,
Beyond reproach, Uncontrolled, uninspected.
We all know these things
Yet we all remain silent, fearful of being labeled:
anti-Semitic
hateful
worse
Considering Germany’s past these labels stick
So we call is “business”, “reparation” take your pick,
As we deliver yet another submarine.
As we provide to Israel the means to deliver annihilation.
I say what must be said.
Why did I stay silent until now?
Because I’m German, of course.
I’m tainted by a stain I cannot wash out
I’m silent because I want so badly to make it right
To put my sins in the past and leave them silently there.
Why did I wait to say it until now?
And write these words with the last of my ink?
Declaring that Israel threatens world peace?
Because it is true and it must be said,
Tomorrow will be too late.
We Germans now carry a new burden of sin on our shoulders
Through the weapons we have sold
We are helping to carry out this foreseeable tragedy
No excuse will remove our stain of complicity.
It must be said. I won’t be silent
I’ve had enough of the hypocrisy;
Please shed the silence with me,
The consequences are all too predictable.
It’s time to demand free and permanent control
of BOTH Israel’s nuclear arsenal
AND Iran’s nuclear facilities
enforced with international supervision.
It’s the only way, in a land convulsed with insanity,
Israelis, Palestinians, everybody, will survive.
And we too, will survive.
His words took me back to what the American poet, Robert Bly, wrote at the start of the George Bush wars of terror in the Middle East...A war that could erase the Iranian people.
Dominated by it’s neighbor, pulsing with righteousness
Smug in the fact that it is they, not Iran,
Who have the Bomb.
Why have I so far avoided to identify Israel by it’s name?,
Israel and it’s ever increasing nuclear arsenal,
Beyond reproach, Uncontrolled, uninspected.
We all know these things
Yet we all remain silent, fearful of being labeled:
anti-Semitic
hateful
worse
Considering Germany’s past these labels stick
So we call is “business”, “reparation” take your pick,
As we deliver yet another submarine.
As we provide to Israel the means to deliver annihilation.
I say what must be said.
Why did I stay silent until now?
Because I’m German, of course.
I’m tainted by a stain I cannot wash out
I’m silent because I want so badly to make it right
To put my sins in the past and leave them silently there.
Why did I wait to say it until now?
And write these words with the last of my ink?
Declaring that Israel threatens world peace?
Because it is true and it must be said,
Tomorrow will be too late.
We Germans now carry a new burden of sin on our shoulders
Through the weapons we have sold
We are helping to carry out this foreseeable tragedy
No excuse will remove our stain of complicity.
It must be said. I won’t be silent
I’ve had enough of the hypocrisy;
Please shed the silence with me,
The consequences are all too predictable.
It’s time to demand free and permanent control
of BOTH Israel’s nuclear arsenal
AND Iran’s nuclear facilities
enforced with international supervision.
It’s the only way, in a land convulsed with insanity,
Israelis, Palestinians, everybody, will survive.
And we too, will survive.
+ At breakfast, Dianne read aloud that it has cost over $12 million to turn the movie, Titanic, into a 3-D blockbuster. My mind drifted to Pope Benedict's Easter Vigil warning: "The darkness that poses a real threat to mankind, after all, is the fact that he can see and investigate tangible material things, but cannot see where the world is going or whence it comes, where our own life is going, what is good and what is evil...With regard to material things, our knowledge and our technical accomplishments are legion, but what reaches beyond, the things of God and the question of good, we can no longer identify." (Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/World/20120407/pope-easter-vigil-120407/#ixzz1rYdQ8ZBu)
Lou Reed, in 1989, was equally prophetic if far less subtle on his masterpiece, New York. Funny to hold the Pope and St. Lou together in the same thought but that's how my mind works. And I think "Starman" cuts to the chase...
Blessings in the afterglow of Pesach and Easter...
2 comments:
Rest well, friends.
Thanks, my man.
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