Monday
As we watch the macho posturing of Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth following their insane attack on Iran, more than ever we need poets like Wilfred Owen. From the vantage point of the World War I trenches, Owen saw the ruinous effects of nationalistic jingoism. In “Dulce et Decorum Et” he talks of those who are “ardent for some desperate glory,” which pretty much sums up Hegseth. Here’s a recent instance of his rhetoric:
Death and destruction from the sky all day long. This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.
In the preface to his posthumously published poems Owen wrote,
This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honor, dominion or power,
except War.
Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry.
The subject of it is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.
In one poem Owen takes the story of Abraham and Isaac and, after changing the ending, applies it to Europe’s leaders. It fits our own leaders only too well.
The Parable of the Old Man and the Young
By Wilfred Owen
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
and builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.Owen is spitting with anger in that concluding couplet.
When given a choice between sacrificing ego (“the Ram of Pride”) and sacrificing sons, the current leaders of Israel, America, and Iran will choose sons every time.
