Dear Squeers,

Another interesting post from you.
The poet Kevin Gilbert talks along
a similar theme. He tells us that
we have a direct responsibility to
the world we live in and our children.
That responsibility can be exercised in
a number of positive ways, it's our choice
to find the most effective (being perhaps
the ballot box, constitutional change and
personal commitment to action?).

"If all the lovely melodies
in all the world were ever sung
and all the master's masterpieces
in the greatest galleries ever hung
and all the statues of David and
the poems and the works of man
were to burn bright for death's delight
throughout our land
a little child looked up and smiled
and beamed with pride and love and joy
and said: 'You won't let them drop that bomb
on me Daddy. You'll stop them, won't you Daddy?'

His question mark
was like an arc all ringed around
with burning flame
I said in loving confidence:
'We'll stop them, child'
but in my heart is fear and burning shame
I actually PAY the Man
to make the BOMB
I pay him Tax to sing
his song of hate
I keep the war-dog on his chain
I help to feel and feed his hate
I PAY THE MAN to make his bomb
to hold the world and my child in fear
I close my heart to human beings
as if afraid
when love draws near

It's ME who's wrong
It's ME who'll burn the song
It's me who'll burn the lovely melody
because I fear other human near
who may somehow flood human love to me
the flame will burn and melt the eyes
of my children as they turn
to me and say with love for me
and faith today:
"You will stop them dropping the bomb on me
won't you Dad?'

The Garden of Love - William Blake

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore;

And I saw it was filled with graves
And tomb-stones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

"...people laughing, people crying,
babies born and old men dying,
the endless circle turns another turn -
Ever changing - colours blending,
no beginning - without ending -
we live and learn
forgetting what we learn -
Is it right of is it wrong for
us to sing and who's the song for?
the endless circle turns another turn -
we live and learn
forgetting what we learn
Loving, hating, joy and sorrow,
yesterday, today, tomorrow -
the endless circle turns another turn -
Like a mist upon the mountain,
like a never-ending fountain -
We live and learn -
forgetting what we learn ..."

(Nan Whitcomb).

Foxy wrote: That responsibility can be exercised in a number of positive ways, it's our choice to find the most effective (being perhaps the ballot box, constitutional change and personal commitment to action?).

Dear Foxy,

Those are fine, respectable ways. However, to create desirable change we must sometimes be less respectable.

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence. Mohandas Gandhi

One of my few heroes is John Brown who was hanged for his unsuccessful uprising at Harper's Ferry. In charge at his hanging was the traitor-to-be, Robert E Lee, who led a much greater uprising. After his fight for slavery he headed a university and died, laden with honours. In my opinion John Brown was a much better man. As a child I lived not far from John Brown's grave, and my family would occasionally visit it. Often we were the only white people there

Dear Squeers,

Thank you for the reply.

You have said;

“No, Squeers is not ready for the smoking jacket just yet. Complacency is an unfounded luxury; there’s work to be done and thoughts to be thunk. The world is a mess and we have an obligation to our children to act, or at least foment.”

But don't you think that tilting your lance at a thread on poetry might be a little Quixotic?

“we can only be complacent, or romantic, when the ‘suffering’ in the world is reducible to philosophy.”

Next you will be sidling up to lovers on park benches saying “It is just the drive to inseminate, cut to the chase!”

From one of my favourite wordsmiths that I thought you might like.

The higher that the monkey can climb
The more he shows his tail
Call no man happy 'til he dies
There's no milk at the bottom of the pail

God builds a church
The devil builds a chapel
Like the thistles that are growing
'round the trunk of a tree
All the good in the world
You can put inside a thimble
And still have room for you and me

If there's one thing you can say
About Mankind
There's nothing kind about man
You can drive out nature with a pitch fork
But it always comes roaring back again

Dear David F.,

Mahatmas Gandhi also said:

"What difference does it make to the dead,
the orphans and the homeless,
whether the mad destruction is wrought under
the name of totalitarianism or the holy name
of liberty or democracy?"

He said:

"I object to violence because when it appears to do
good, the good is only temporary. The evil it does
is permanent."

And Golda Meir said:

"It is true we have won all our wars, but we have
paid for them. We don't want victories anymore."

Dorothy Green has the final word:

"No on has the right to exhort writers to
write on certain subjects or take up particular
moral stances. But if they love their art, we
can expect them to be on the side of life rather
than death, on the side of being, rather than
non-being, to prefer the beauty of this planet to
its desecration, and to use writing to reveal
truths.

We need above all to fall in love with this planet,
which, as far as we know, is the only one carefully
balanced to sustain human life without assistance
from somewhere else.

In the most destructive age in history, the word 'creative'
is more mindlessly bandied about than ever before;
a fact we need to ponder as writers. The truth is that
human beings came into a world prepared for them. If
we blow it up, we cannot hope to put it together again.
We cannot 'create' something out of nothing: even
the greatest artist did not invent colour, nor the
greatest musician sound, nor the greatest writer - speech.
All we can do is discover, imitate, re-arrange-or-destroy.
Our worst illusion is that we might return to the state of
primitive man. But he did not have polluted soil,
poisoned streams, irradiated game and vegetable foods."