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Monday, October 16, 2023

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO WRITE ABOUT WAR


 

I don't know how to write about war,
bombs dropping out of the sky on both sides
of a political divide, deaths and injuries in the thousands,
humanitarian aid, power, water, food, cut off
from the desperate,
hostages held in tunnels
deep below the earth, 

but I do know how to make a comforting pot
of potato-leek soup on a cloudy October morning,
stirring and stirring as the potatoes soften,
wondering when human hearts will soften
enough to recognize human beings instead of
enemies: simply people wanting 
to live simply.

I don't know how to write about war,
desperate people fleeing desperately
to they know not where, carrying their small
cloth bundles, nothing to sustain them
but their desire to live and keep their children safe,

me thinking of the shiny, happy faces
of my great-grandchildren, a world away,
and how do we keep
all children safe in a world at war,

but I do know how to bear witness to the traumas
of this world, that we humans inflict upon
the innocent, both human and non-human beings,
a species skilled at causing devastation and despair,
and calling it power.

I don't know how to write about war,
except if we can wage it, surely we can stop it,
and what is it about us that we don't?
We come to this world gentle-hearted,
without a trigger warning for what we will endure.
What happens that causes some
to grow into someone
who can kill an innocent, then utter
a prayer as if he is a messenger of the divine?

I will never know how to write about war.


From Laurie Wagner's prose poem: "I Don't Know How to Write about War", the italicized line I have repeated in my poem. To me any war equates to suffering on all sides, too much suffering to bear.

Shared at dVerse where the topic is Why War? Why indeed.

16 comments:

  1. I grok the part about "Our right to exist requires us to destroy the murderers who crept up behind us...they came in under cover of a call to worship, they go out IN LITTLE PIECES!" I just don't understand how people can feel that destroying the wealth of a poor land, fouling the limited water supply, risking *more* injury to *more* children, can help.

    From here it seems as if Israel could still go after the murderers as common criminals, which they are, though nastier than is common.

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  2. This is a powerful poem, Sherry. One of your best in recent times. So true, war is hard to write about, but we CAN write about our feelings about it and what we personally know to be true.

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  3. How do you write about war? That's how I felt when setting down to write for this prompt. I cannot stand to watch it but at the same time, know that it cannot be ignored. We ignore at our peril but then feeling so helpless as to know what you can do. Why can we not stop it? Powerful words and much food for thought!

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  4. The sad story is that we all know how to hate, and with new tools at our disposal it always come... once we had war caused by printed words, then war rooted in words spoken on radio, tv and film, now we have words of hatred spreading on (anti)social media.. every piece of hatred (rightful or not) takes us closer to war until we learn how to handle it.

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  5. I like the way you took Laurie Wagner's line and used it as a springboard into your own poem, Sherry. The repetition is very effective and reflects the feelings of many of us poets. I found these lines comforting:
    ‘but I do know how to make a comforting pot
    of potato-leek soup on a cloudy October morning,
    stirring and stirring as the potatoes soften,
    wondering when human hearts will soften
    enough to recognize human beings…’

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  6. You and I don't understand how anyone can perpetrate such horrors and not see them as horrors. But nor can I understand the men who cry about the horrors perpetrated upon them, hold up the tiny corpse of their child, and whose first reaction is to murder ten 'enemy' children in revenge. Those minds are closed to me.

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  7. You and I can't understand how the men who commit horrors don't see them as horrors. But neither do I understand the men who are so devastated by the death of their child in a bomb strike, that their first reaction is to try and murder ten 'enemy' children in revenge.

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  8. It's devastatingly written, Sherry, for all we "never know how to write about war." The repetition is powerful, the imagery utterly heartbreaking. When will we ever stop wars so we never have to try to write about them again, except in warning.

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  9. Sherry, I don't think we ever do. Over and over I ask myself Why? Why do people kill and destroy? and there is never an answer. A powerful poem.

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  10. I think my comment disappeared, so I'll try to reconstruct it...
    This is a powerful poem--I don't think anyone knows how to write about war in a way that makes sense. We have so many questions and so few answers.

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  11. What happens that causes some
    to grow into someone
    who can kill an innocent - that's the bottom line.. what are we and what have we become.

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  12. A wonderfully interesting poem. Amazingly well done.

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  13. I can feel helplessness in the contrast between our lives, who don’t know how to write about war, and those who live through it, or don’t. It grieves my heart because I don’t know what to do.

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  14. Outstanding poem, Sherry. We can only write of effects.

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