April, as a poet has said, is the cruelest month. Given the current climate of cut-price jackboots marching over education, scientific advancement, international alliances, human decency and the arts (among other elements that mark a civilized society), we need to hunker down around things like the Pythagorean Theorem, Baroque polyphony, the Oxford comma debate, Expressionism and, yes, poetry, as a way to keep bright the fires of sanity, grace and compassion.
So let’s think of National Poetry Month this year as a necessary component of the spirit of resistance, persistence and perhaps a few victories over ignorance, fear, greed and buffoonery. We are faced with an unprecedented assault on our civilization; sadly and shamefully, that assault is coming from within our own walls. So we need every resource to organize and resist this evil.
To get us going, then, let’s have a poem
from British-born Denise Levertov. Levertov was the daughter of a Hasidic Jew
who left Russian Poland (half of Poland having been part of Russia until 1918)
after World War I and emigrated to England, where he became an Anglican priest.
The entire family campaigned for human rights, which on its own would have kept
her from being allowed into the United States under the current administration,
but she came here in 1947, so she spent most of her career as an American.
Levertov was one of many writers and
artists who spoke out against the Vietnam War. She was among those who did more
than just speak out—she withheld tax payments, and she was one of the founders
of the group RESIST, a philanthropic non-profit that funds grass-roots activist
organizations. RESIST was created in 1967 in response to the anti-war
proclamation, “A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority”.
So let’s start out the month with
something appropriately titled.
“Making Peace”
A voice from the dark called out,
‘The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.’
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
|until we begin to utter its metaphors,
Learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses . . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.
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