Saturday night, the Fall of Kabul, the Choppers of Cong, the mendacity of “Why didn’t we see this coming?” All I can think about is a poem I heard by chance on KPFK seventeen or eighteen years ago. Haunted then as I am now, remembering little, I wrote to the writer, Los Angeles poet Jan Wesley, asking for a copy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Upon receiving it I replied:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m often surprised by poems and films upon second reading. Memory can be cruel, or sweet when it’s on the mark. And when it’s merely patchy, delightfully brutal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was terribly brutal during an earlier war, I don’t even remember which one. Blaming kids for enlisting, I was chastened by a coworker for my advantaged vantage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We need these expressions even if only they begin to scratch the surface of our brutality.<\/p>\n\n\n
Just imagine. The first beautiful boy I ever
knew was a strawberry blonde, paleness<\/p>\n
peppered in brown freckles, skin and hair
singed with salmon red. The blue in his eyes<\/p>\n
ran all the way to the back of his head,
and how those eyes must have shone<\/p>\n
amazement as the plane lifted up and over
unfamiliar breadth of water, jagged outlines<\/p>\n
of the Alps and Pyrenees, the transporter
guzzling oil by the Red Sea, over Himalayas,<\/p>\n
the Bay of Bengal, nosing its way to
misprounceable landscapes at the end<\/p>\n
of the world, wide aura of shock around him,
running man swept up in gales of a hurricane,<\/p>\n
pheasant strutting center country-road lines
in our Pennsylvania town. Poolside on our patch<\/p>\n
of lawn we liked to watch him lift barbells
made in the factory downtown\u2014and imagine<\/p>\n
how we felt as the iron hit his chest, then
dipped back to cement, sometimes 50 times<\/p>\n
before someone\u2019s mother picked us up at five.
Knowing young girls could ruin him,<\/p>\n
he\u2019d say \u201cbahbye,\u201d neck inclined to one side,
maybe to have a closer look. And just<\/p>\n
imagine the look he had as he was hit and spit
into the air, that first boy I ever knew to die<\/p>\n
in Vietnam, fear-scorched skin opening beyond
what one should ever be allowed to feel.<\/p>\n
\u2014Jan Wesley<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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