AMERICANS STILL DON'T GET IT

From Poets’ Basement Counterpunch

In Afghanistan
(May 22, 2006)
By MICHAEL SPRINGATE

For doing what they say is inevitable
they consider themselves important men.

They strut, speak into cameras, huff and puff,
trying to ignore the fact that what they do

is bomb mudhuts filled with families.

I want to apologize now to the children
of the uselessly murdered, should there be

survivors or relatives. I want to acknowledge
to them, should they ever be able to read this,

that we, the population, knew what was happening.
But we were indifferent. There is no better word.

Or maybe I am speaking to my own children,
or the children of my children. Make no mistake,

they did not die so that you might live,
nor were they killed so that you would live

in freedom. Better to say we are clients
to an empire and it is the function of some,

the ignorant privileged among us, to ensure
that we pay appropriate tribute: perhaps

in wood, perhaps in water or uranium,
currency manipulation or banking law,

and sometimes, with the bodies
of our young, but always, with

commitment to support the killing.

I know there have been ages where truth
and honour were esteemed: ours is not one.

Ours is an age of rampant hypocrisy and
mechanized cruelty. We destroy people

for trying to improve their lot.

We point to our sacred writing and corrupt
political processes and ask them to be like us

or die. Warplanes bombing mudhuts.
Don’t look away. See it. Smell it.

There was a time – Guernica – we thought
that horror at horror was appropriate, but

it isn’t anymore. It is, I am told, a
humanist nostalgia. I want to say clearly,

with words that will last, with words
able to etch themselves on stone,

our warplanes bomb their mudhuts.

Over and over. Over and over.
The stone is our heart. The stone

is our mind. Thick. Hard. Unmoving.
I, who inherit the metaphysics

of Donne, the wry humour of Chaucer,
even the imaginative grip of Homer,

know that my words now must be
simple to represent this western culture.

We support the bombing of mudhuts,
killing the gathered families, and

labelling all dead men as enemies,
and all dead women and children

as accidents. Why is that?

It is not for our safety, nor theirs.
It is not for our freedom, nor theirs.

Is it for our pride? our economy?
our internal politics? the need for

war to prove one’s use? the role
of fear to ensure one’s place?

Or is it sexual after all, a desire
to kill as a tease to the dull.

Let these words last. Let them
be heard and understood and

memorized. We agree that airplanes
should bomb the families gathered

in their mudhuts. We are proud of
doing so. We are proud of our right

to pay tribute and show obeisance.
We are not barbarians ransacking Rome,

we are more arrogant than they, more
cruel, and less understanding. Our one

insight is to pretend there is no choice
while claiming we are fighting for choice.

We join the despicable of the ages.

MICHAEL SPRINGATE lives in Vancouver, British Columbia and can be reached at michael@springate-combs.ca.

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I thought that this poem is particularly relevant to Mr Porter’s article. Thanks for this page which gets better and better with its mix of serious political comment and art.