Poems and Songs

In an Ilse Newell Concert at Trinity, Apalachicola years ago, we had a jazz band down from Tallahassee. There was lots of great old music and singing. And when the band broke into "Dixie" about half the audience leapt to our feet cheering, clapping and singing. The others simply didn't understand.

Someone like me who grew up singing “Let’s remember Pearl Harbor” may be unlikely to drive a Toyota Camry, the most popular car in America. But a news article a few years ago said that when Japanese students were taught about WW!! someone exclaimed, “We had war with America? Who won?”

“The Taliban, in Their Own Verse” and “The Poetry of Al Qaeda and the Taliban” (NYT) may infuriate, but does hint that behind vehement hatred and horrendous violence are human beings with feelings. That their views are so different from mine stirs memories of seminary Old Testament classes when we discovered lyricism and droll humor in ancient campfire stories and learned to chuckle with the professor.

No wonder our Edomite enemies are so ugly and stupid: they got it from their gullible hairy red monster ancestor Esau. Did you see what we got for that dish of beans?! Jeesh, what a schlemiel. Yuk yuk.
Where did Aaron get the gold for the golden calf in the wilderness? You kidding me, don’t you remember? Those stupid Egyptians were so glad to get rid of us that they gave us all their gold, silver and jewelry just to get us to leave!

And they could chortle at themselves.

Sure, Jacob was a scoundrel, but the laugh was on him when the sun came up and he saw that Uncle Laban had stuck him with the ugly one! We got back at Laban later though!

Enemies are meant to hate each other, it’s human nature and historical, even helps determination and morale. Sometimes humanity comes out later, in retrospect, after the bombs have all exploded, and the smoke drifted away, the rubble cleared, tears dried, cities rebuilt, and people are laughing and there are poems to read. It seems to have happened between us and Japan, Germany, Vietnam. Unimaginably, perhaps even with T and Al Q in someone’s lifetime, though I may not visualize it. Maybe even between the Jews and Palestinians in some future age. From NYT this morning ... “here is the poet Samiullah Khalid Sahak on the way the war has dehumanized all its participants, including the Taliban themselves:

We are not animals,

I say this with certainty.

But,

Humanity has been forgotten by us,

And I don’t know when it will come back.

May Allah give it to us,

And decorate us with this jewelry.

Dehumanized is the most tragic word of all. Saddest, it isn’t only them. Maybe our great-greatgrandchildren and theirs will read poems together, who knows. Speaking for myself, I no longer leap to my feet to sing "Dixie" as I once did; but the music still stirs my soul; and I do remember the words.