Thanks and best wishes to those who have posted reports from NY - and I'm
glad to know Harriet is ok -
I've had the day to calm down a little, but I still feel sick to my stomach
and haven't been able to eat or even drink. The thought of that carnage is
unspeakable. What the world is going to be after this fills me with fear,
but that is another question, and fear is an especially useless response.
What I feel unambiguously is that the ideology of murder has no place here.
I'm with Genet on this: the murder of any human being is an absolute crime,
and it is impossible to multiply absolutes. Each human being murdered is a
world destroyed. That by no means reduces the crime: it multiplies it
unimaginably. No one - American, Palestinian, Afghani, Iraqi, whoever -
deserves to die in the name of such empty ideologies, in such blank
indiscriminate hatreds. But they do, and will. Poetry can do nothing, but
it can at least not chant this obscene deathly mantra.
The Blake poem which occurs to me is The Human Abstract:
Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody Poor:
And Mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we;
And mutual fear brings peace
Till the selfish loves increase.
Then cruelty knits a snare
And spreads his baits with care.
He sits down with holy fears
And waters the ground with tears:
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.
Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head;
And the Catterpillar and Fly
Feed on the Mystery.
And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat;
And the Raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.
Best wishes to all
Alison
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