2012 |
2012 |
Here is what remains of hostage posters after being scraped off a telephone pole near here. It’s as though these hostages don’t exist and what caused their captivity never happened, they are being erased, cancelled. This is probably part of the intention of whoever obliterated these posters.
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky —
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.
The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness –
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.
I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness – blackness and silence.
While snow the window-panes bedim,
The fire curls up a sunny charm,
Where, creaming o'er the pitcher's rim,
The flowering ale is set to warm;
Mirth, full of joy as summer bees,
Sits there, its pleasures to impart,
And children, 'tween their parent's knees,
Sing scraps of carols o'er by heart.
And some, to view the winter weathers,
Climb up the window-seat with glee,
Likening the snow to falling feathers,
In fancy infant ecstasy;
Laughing, with superstitious love,
O'er visions wild that youth supplies,
Of people pulling geese above,
And keeping Christmas in the skies.
As tho' the homestead trees were drest,
In lieu of snow, with dancing leaves,
As tho' the sun-dried martin's nest,
Instead of ickles, hung the eaves,
The children hail the happy day -
As if the snow were April's grass,
And pleas'd, as 'neath the warmth of May,
Sport o'er the water froze as glass.
The Unicorn Rests in a Garden (or The Unicorn in Captivity) by an unknown artist, 1495–1505 |
When the nation is divided
there is no nation: when history is discarded
the old regret what life has become;
there is no nation when people
have lost belief in the soul; there is no nation
when people are divided and turn on each other;
when the nation turns its back
on what made it a nation
there is no nation:
ships don't reach harbour,
cod fish so plentiful off Nfld's coast are gone,
the massacre of buffalos, a mountain of bones
on a bleak autumn morning,
flash mobs stealing everything from stores,
crows, carrion, and crowds of people
live in darkness,
goodness is ridiculed, vulgarity
celebrated, macabre faces in clouds,
mobs pounding on old people's front doors:
what is old is cancelled
as decreed, as legislated;
and people love ignorance and renounce
their own culture;
they are crossing the bridge
cities burn and the ruins
are ploughed into dust—
11 May 2023
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
All of the posters shown in a previous post, "Remember the hostages", have been torn down; I saw an older man meticulously peeling and scraping one of the posters from where it had been glued, he was using an exacto knife to do this. Indeed, in reaction to the tearing down of these posters, a neighbouring community has said that anyone removing similar posters will be fined up to $1K.
A few days ago, while walking by Concordia University on Sherbrooke Street West, I found posters with fairly offensive and ignorant comments scrawled across them. Whoever this person with a felt pen is he doesn't care about freedom of speech or that there are still over two hundred innocent people being held by terrorists; the person who wrote on the posters doesn't care about the hostages, or about freedom, or about truth, or about decency, he is full of righteous indignation, hate, and ignorance. Freedom of speech seems minor when placed in the context of war and people held as hostages; but freedom of speech is always significant and many people have lost their lives defending this freedom, defending it against censorship and cancellation. If we deny freedom of speech, in this case including destroying posters and writing on posters, we have descended to the level of this person who has written over hostage posters. In many respects we have moved into a very dark age and, I suspect, this darkness will last a very long time. This dark age hasn’t just begun but it has certainly gotten much worse.
I think not . . . The evidence is to the opposite view . . . |
James Russell Lowell |
Stood the tall Archangel weighing
All man’s dreaming, doing, saying,
All the failure and the pain,
All the triumph and the gain,
In the unimagined years,
Full of hopes, more full of tears,
Since old Adam’s hopeless eyes
Backward searched for Paradise,
And, instead, the flame-blade saw
Of inexorable Law.
Waking, I beheld him there,
With his fire-gold, flickering hair,
In his blinding armor stand,
And the scales were in his hand:
Mighty were they, and full well
They could poise both heaven and hell
“Angel,” asked I humbly then,
“Weighest thou the souls of men?
That thine office is, I know.”
“Nay,” he answered me, “not so;
But I weigh the hope of Man
Since the power of choice began,
In the world, of good or ill.”
Then I waited and was still.
In one scale I saw him place
All the glories of our race,
Cups that lit Belshazzar’s feast,
Gems, the lightning of the East,
Kublai’s sceptre, Caesar’s sword,
Many a poet’s golden word,
Many a skill of science, vain
To make men as gods again.
In the other scale he threw
Things regardless, outcast, few,
Martyr-ash, arena sand,
Of St. Francis’ cord a strand,
Beechen cups of men whose need
Fasted that the poor might feed,
Disillusions and despairs
Of young saints with grief-grayed hairs,
Broken hearts that brake for Man.
Marvel through my pulses ran
Seeing then the beam divine
Swiftly on this hand decline,
While Earth’s splendor and renown
Mounted light as thistle-down.
Stood the tall Archangel weighing
All man’s dreaming, doing, saying,
All the failure and the pain,
All the triumph and the gain,
In the unimagined years,
Full of hopes, more full of tears,
Since old Adam’s hopeless eyes
Backward searched for Paradise,
And, instead, the flame-blade saw
Of inexorable Law.
Waking, I beheld him there,
With his fire-gold, flickering hair,
In his blinding armor stand,
And the scales were in his hand:
Mighty were they, and full well
They could poise both heaven and hell
“Angel,” asked I humbly then,
“Weighest thou the souls of men?
That thine office is, I know.”
“Nay, ” he answered me,” not so;
But I weigh the hope of Man
Since the power of choice began,
In the world, of good or ill.”
Then I waited and was still.
In one scale I saw him place
All the glories of our race,
Cups that lit Belshazzar’s feast,
Gems, the lightning of the East,
Kublai’s sceptre, Caesar’s sword,
Many a poet’s golden word,
Many a skill of science, vain
To make men as gods again.
In the other scale he threw
Things regardless, outcast, few,
Martyr-ash, arena sand,
Of St. Francis’ cord a strand,
Beechen cups of men whose need
Fasted that the poor might feed,
Disillusions and despairs
Of young saints with grief-grayed hairs,
Broken hearts that brake for Man.
Marvel through my pulses ran
Seeing then the beam divine
Swiftly on this hand decline,
While Earth’s splendor and renown
Mounted light as thistle-down.
My friend R.R. Skinner was born in June or July 1908. Reg grew up in Bethnal Green, UK, and one day he told me about the German Zeppelin that crashed at Billericay, in September 1916, during World War One. Reg said that he was appalled by the reaction of the crowd, they cheered when the Zeppelin caught on fire and crashed killing all on board; this event, he said, showed him man's inhumanity to man.
And now let us move up to the present moment and, reading Kathleen Raine's Autobiographies, published in the 1970s, in which she discusses this same event. She writes:
I saw, from the front window of West View, the Billericay Zeppelin pass, a great pencil-like shape, and then a jet of flame, then a blaze that lit up the windows of West View. 'Are there men in it?' I asked; and when I was told 'Yes' I cried. My father told me afterwards that a dead German officer had been found by a farmer in a field, lying near his path. The man had beautiful teeth, and the farmer stamped on his face, breaking them. (p. 51)
And then Raine discusses seeing a second Zeppelin burn and crash near her home. This was a profound experience for the young Kathleen Raine, who, like my friend Reg Skinner, remembered the event many years later; both were born in June or July 1908. But could Kathleen Raine have seen a Zeppelin, a burning Zeppelin, at her home in Ilford? I suppose this is possible, her home was named West View and Billericay is west of Ilford. Could Reg have seen a burning Zeppelin at Bethnal Green; would citizens in Bethnal Green, perhaps looking up from the street, have cheered as the burning Zeppelin moved across the sky? Bethnal Green is 8.9 miles from Ilford and Billericay is 28.2 miles from Ilford; Bethnal Green to Billericay is 31.3 miles by road. Whatever the case the Zeppelin crash of Billericay was a significant wartime experience for both children.
I remember when a plane crashed near Montreal, in November 1963, and that some of the locals descended on the crash site and stole rings and other possessions from the victims whose body parts had not yet been collected by the authorities. I still remember with disgust that people could steal from these people who had died so violently. Here is a passage from a Toronto Star article published on 29 November 2013:
Rodgers also said no intact body was found either, only parts. There were 111 passengers and seven crew aboard the flight. Authorities scrambled to get organized.
“In what was the parish of Ste- Thérèse -de-Blainville, there was one police officer, Mr. Aubertin, who somehow maintained security,” said Rodgers, who also oversees recreation for the town.
“But he was quick with people who tried to rob the dead and it’s said he even had to fire a few shots into the air to deter some people from making off with watches or wallets.”
Well, that's also man's inhumanity to man . . .
The entrepreneur who wanted to build a 12 story mixed condo/commercial building on this site was defeated in a referendum.The fact is this is a poor location for luxury living, it's beside a huge rail yard with the noise of trains shunting, trains coming and going, and cars and trucks entering and leaving the area; as well, the small strip mall across the street from the proposed condo has never been a success, it's maybe half occupied, so who will shop at the stores in the proposed condo/commercial area? And, finally, this is a low density area of single family dwellings, not condos, not apartments, but families with parents, children, the elderly, working people, all living in homes they rent or own; it is an isolated location unless you have a car. The local residents are hostile to the proposed building they attempted to impose on their neighbourhood, they voted against it; who would vote in favour of a year or longer of construction -- danger to their children caused by large trucks, noise, and dirt -- followed by a needlessly large 12 story, or even a six story, building looming over one's home and community and an influx of strangers? How does that affect one's property taxes? How does that affect the quality of one's life? It doesn't. The age of the 12 story complex in this area has come to an end, but what will be proposed next?
To listen to the apologists
for evil, they have become
evil themselves, with excuses,
doublespeak, and out and out
lies; all the lies they tell,
these will come back
for them, like terrorists
(for every lie
is a terrorist
killing truth)
--these apologists
for evil will be visited
by evil, they will know
what they've done
as they drink tea
or coffee, as they sit
in their homes
with the doors exploding
letting in the terror
and war cries
celebrating death, the terrorists
with faces covered,
with their guns
& holy books,
with their conviction
in their beliefs,
their absolute conviction
in the order of life
they adhere to, with
their absolute conviction
and belief in killing anyone
who stands in their
way--
25 October 2023
In 2008 |
Gilbert Layton Park in October 2012 |