History and Politicians

Rumsfeld claimed yesterday that the lesson learned from World War Two is that appeasement does not work. He's such an ignoramus. There is no such thing as a lesson learned from a single historical event. Appeasement worked extraordinarily well for imperial China over many centuries, as emperors routinely bought off aggressive neighbors by showering them with hugely valuable gifts. Liberals use Vietnam in the same way: the lesson of that quagmire is don't pour lots of troops into conflicts with guerrillas. This is stupid too. Why have we allowed the political discourse in this country to become so historiographically impoverished?

Farallon, part 2

Time exists on the slack hypotenuse
Strung between sky and gutflutter,
Each peak and valley of pulsing wet
Taking us further from our footing

From what it feels like to lean, to stand
Without being threatened, without the surround
Speaking, without splashing. Sea lions applaud
The lurching circus of lenses and the odd wince.

Farallon, part 1

We ride upon the thin edge of the water
Casting our image on it, withdrawing from
The fatiguing guesswork we had about wet
About what it's like to look up from deep down.

The thing supporting us, keeping us from
Slipping deep into the softly rolling water
Is part of a whale, its image of us as a film
Infecting its dark eye, itching its attention.

Other things ride around the slick of oily us
Barking, fluttering, wanting to be less wet
And less adhesive. Water claims them thickly.
Us it salts, rolls, moves about on its tongue.

We meet the wanderers out here where land fails
Slipping suddenly into utter dimness. Water
Draws a sort of penitential piss from the boat
Which burps and moves utterly nowhere.

Roger Clay's Proposal

I may be oversusceptible to news
But what I see in the papers leaves me numb.
The bomb. The ultimatum. Wires hum—
Adult impersonators giving interviews,

As if that helped. What would? I've thought of it.
With all due ceremony—flags unfurled,
Choirs, priests—the leaders of a sobered world
Should meet, kneel down, and, joining hands, submit

To execution: say in Rome or Nice—
Towns whose economy depends on crowds.
Ah, but those boys, their heads aren't in the clouds.
They would find reasons not to die for peace.

Damn them. I'd give my life. Each day I meet
Men like me, young, indignant. We're not cranks.
Will some of them step up? That's plenty. Thanks.
Now let's move before we get cold feet.

Music we'll need, and short, clear speeches given
Days of maximum coverage in the press.
We'll emphasize disinterestedness,
Drive the point home that someone could be driven

To do this. Where to go? Why not Japan,
Land of the honorable suicide.
And will the world change heart? Until we've tried,
No one can say it will not. No one can.


by James Merrill

Nuts

Feeling distinctly preverbal today. Want to do nothing but eat macadamia nuts, drink apple juice, and stare out the window.

Hiroshima Day on August 6

On August 6 1945, at a quarter after eight in the morning, Hiroshima was destroyed by the United States and a nuclear bomb named Little Boy. By December 140,000 human beings had died. The American attack on Nagasaki, on August 9, killed 74,000 more. Never forget.