#2, September 11, 2003

Traversing Clio (1)

September 2001

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In September of 1939 W.H. Auden was sitting in a café in New York City when he heard of the outbreak of war in Europe. His poem, named after the month when the Second World War commenced, describes New York City's inhabitants going about their business, almost oblivious. But everything that seems so distanced from the experience of war is, in Auden’s rendering of it, deeply implicated in and imbricated with those same events. The personal or individual in this poem becomes social and political. In September of 2001 that connection was reversed, the political realities of the world becoming embedded in the personal realities and consciousness of American citizens. And yet, what seemed in its immediate, numbing aftermath a world altering event -- an end of innocence -- became in a way its opposite. The tragedy itself became an expression of American victimhood and innocence in the face of a jealous and hateful world; it became a justification for flag waving, not a reason for introspection; it became a call to arms, with the claim that lasting peace could only come through war. But as the Quakers have told us, there is no way (roadmap) to peace; peace is the way. What follows, then, are my thoughts on reading Auden’s poem in the aftermath of the horrors of September 11, 2001.

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September 2001

Is there a flag for humanity

– a composite of all flags

and no flags whatsoever –

one that will not summon up

the “rocket’s red glare,”

another tin-pot dictator,

or the union jack boot?

Is there a religion for humanity

– the combined force of all gods

and of no gods at all –

no holier than thou,

no holy cow,

no apocalyptic circumcision?

Is there a discourse of peace

– the elimination of that disrespect

coursing through all human language –

when the suited-sage calls for tolerance,

but the bull horn

proclaims Democracy’s jihad?

Is there any recourse to truth

– that “reaffirming flame” –

when the rumble of hatred

brings concrete dust

tumbling down

onto an ash-littered concourse?

Is there any place for self-reflection

– so that we too may learn

the terror of our ways –

when we have been laden down

by mirror images

of our own creation?

Is there any space left for bold humility,

when “the times require”

and “the public demands”

the arrogance of a response

in kind

– the response unkind?

Is there?

Or is there Not:

only “negation and despair,”

warlike nation and “healthy” State,

knotting our disjointed remains?

© Rob Gregg, 2003