Poetry and Pictures

 Second installment but this time the pictures are by Rebekah and Deborah from the catacombs in Paris. Poetry by Benjamin.

Endless

 

Where has all the power gone for good

When nations struggle endlessly toward inaction

Blame for problems squarely laid upon

Those backs already bent by deprivation

Too easy it remains to be at peace

When battles fought are not in your backyard

Ever more sleazy talking heads announce

The death tolls in a decrescending drawl

That fails entirely to help resolve

The tribulations which continue to evolve

From colonies we’ve lost but somehow never held

To terrorists we’ve sought and never found

An endless game of ring around the rose

Whose thorns do cause much pain to those that know

That we are all to blame for this charade

And dancing corpses could not make believe

With gravitas equivalent to the many souls

Whose bloodied spirits we have helped enroll

In such cruel parodies of theater shows

As are depicted in the end by rows on rows

Of crosses, headstones, and where we give aid

In burials en grosse we call mass graves

The pits were dug by native hands, it’s true

But each of us helped fill them, me and you.

 
 


 

Comments

[Rane]

Margie~
Your son is wise beyond his years.
He knows the things that only
the old seam to know. I am moved
greatly, if only those that need
to hear this could hear it and
open their ears and minds.
Your son is great peace writer!
Tell him that his poem made my
husband cry, I have only seen him
do this 3 times before.
(Japanese don't show this feeling)
But he said maybe he is a
Reincarnation of Mahatma Gandhi,
amazing understanding for a young man.
Thank you.
Rane

[julochka]

i've not seen the catacombs in paris, but i saw a similar ossuary at meteora in greece. powerful pictures for a powerful poem.

[Patricia]

The restrained fury in this poem is really evocative and intense. It reminds me of the first part of Yeats' "Second Coming":

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

The part about nations struggling "endlessly toward inaction" pretty well captures our world in crisis.

The photos are superb!!

[Laura G.]

Eerily beautiful. Haunting images and words - especially love the last stanza of Benjamin's poem.

[.amanda.]

haunting..lovely..

[Ben J. O.]

When I sit alone and write
I sometimes look out on the night
It isn’t often that I write
By day, I just can’t stand the light

I write at night and watch the moon
I wonder if I’ll see it soon.

[Vegetarian Man]

Scary looking....lots of skulls