Every child murdered here

I first read about Babi Yar in high school, about the same time I first heard some of Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s poems. It was a novel notion to me that some guy, in the Soviet Union, long before Glasnost, could be a poet. You know, like Ferlinghetti or Marlowe or Yeats.

I had pretty limited notions of both poets and current events back then. I lived in the suburbs.

When I finally got interested in poetry, one of the first books I bought was one of his collections. I don’t now recall which one, or any of the poems in it; so it didn’t have a lasting effect on me. It was probably a “Hey-I’m-sophisticated-I’m-reading-a-Soviet-poet” kind of statement.

Much later, I picked up a copy of Anatoly Kuznetsov’s Babi Yar at a used book shop. And at that time I had no bleeding idea of what I was getting myself into—the book cover was extremely sparse in the summarizing blurb department. I just knew it was a novel about a massacre of Jews by the Nazis that took place in Kiev in 1941.

Much later still, when I finally got around to cracking it open to read, a steady tide of horror and disbelief rose over me until I nearly drowned. It turns out that Kutznetsov’s book is a “documentary novel” of his experience witnessing the two-day bloodbath in which nearly 34,000 men, women and children were murdered and shoved layer upon layer into the ravine called Babi Yar.

Kuznetsov says, “"Let me emphasize again that I have not told about anything exceptional, but only about ordinary things that were part of a system; things that happened just yesterday, historically speaking, when people were exactly as they are today."

Yevtushenko also wrote about the atrocity; it’s one of his most famous works. Like Kuznetsov’s, his account is searing. But he uses the poem to point out that the Soviet state is not much of an improvement on the Nazis, and to denounce anti-Semitism in any garb. It was a pretty ballsy move back in 1961, when it was first published.

And I don’t need to make any connection for you between his “Union of the Russian People” and current events. History, baby—if you miss it once, it comes around again. We right here are proof of that.

“Babi Yar”

No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone.
I am afraid.
Today, I am as old
As the entire Jewish race itself.

I see myself an ancient Israelite.
I wander o'er the roads of ancient Egypt
And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured
And even now, I bear the marks of nails.

It seems to me that Dreyfus is myself.
The Philistines betrayed me - and now judge.
I'm in a cage. Surrounded and trapped,
I'm persecuted, spat on, slandered, and
The dainty dollies in their Brussels frills
Squeal, as they stab umbrellas at my face.

I see myself a boy in Belostok
Blood spills, and runs upon the floors,
The chiefs of bar and pub rage unimpeded
And reek of vodka and of onion, half and half.

I'm thrown back by a boot, I have no strength left,
In vain I beg the rabble of pogrom,
To jeers of "Kill the Jews, and save our Russia!"
My mother's being beaten by a clerk.

O, Russia of my heart, I know that you
Are international, by inner nature.
But often those whose hands are steeped in filth
Abused your purest name, in name of hatred.

I know the kindness of my native land.
How vile, that without the slightest quiver
The anti-Semites have proclaimed themselves
The "Union of the Russian People!"

It seems to me that I am Anna Frank,
Transparent, as the thinnest branch in April,
And I'm in love, and have no need of phrases,
But only that we gaze into each other's eyes.
How little one can see, or even sense!
Leaves are forbidden, so is sky,
But much is still allowed - very gently
In darkened rooms each other to embrace.

-"They come!"

-"No, fear not - those are sounds
Of spring itself. She's coming soon.
Quickly, your lips!"

-"They break the door!"

-"No, river ice is breaking..."

Wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar,
The trees look sternly, as if passing judgment.
Here, silently, all screams, and, hat in hand,
I feel my hair changing shade to gray.

And I myself, like one long soundless scream
Above the thousands of thousands interred,
I'm every old man executed here,
As I am every child murdered here.

No fiber of my body will forget this.
May "Internationale" thunder and ring
When, for all time, is buried and forgotten
The last of anti-Semites on this earth.
There is no Jewish blood that's blood of mine,
But, hated with a passion that's corrosive
Am I by anti-Semites like a Jew.
And that is why I call myself a Russian!

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Every rung

Here in the Old Dominion, we’re winding down the gubernatorial term of Glenn Youngkin. Thanks be to God.

(One good thing about the former Capital of the Confederacy is the restriction on the executive branch: a governor cannot serve two consecutive terms.)

Youngkin’s done his best to be a fleece-vested Kleptocrat, starting out his term with a report-a-teacher-who’s-mentioning-[anything “woke] snitchline. That shut down after thousands of people trolled the technology, reporting, well, anything that came to mind; Republicans, the weather, bad poetry, fleas.

He’s also been hampered by Democratic majorities in both houses of the Virginia legislature. The crowning achievement of his reign was supposed to be a deal for a sports arena in Alexandria, to lure the Wizards and Capitals away from DC (giving enormous “incentives” to the teams’ owner Ted Leonsis). He presented it suddenly as a near fait accompli at the end of 2023, but the lege, spearheaded by a Black woman delegate from Hampton Roads, stopped it. To the great relief of everyone in Northern Virginia.

He has made inroads in DEI programs throughout the state, and this will have to be unpicked once he’s gone. Which cannot come soon enough for my liking. His smug, condescending White male face just begs for bitchslapping, and I was sick of seeing it long before the 2021 campaign was over.

So my entry for National Poetry Month today is something to remind me and all of us about playing the long game. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

 Using the term Jacob’s ladder to refer to the connection between heaven and earth goes back to…Jacob, in the Bible. Jacob dreamt of a ladder that went all the way to heaven, with angels and everything. In Christianity, Jacob’s ladder is a metaphor for Christ, who bridges humanity and the godhead.

The spiritual “Jacob’s Ladder” dates to at least 1825, and was sung by slaves, who for generations could only dream of an escape from bondage. It’s in the form of call and response, which is useful for participation by unlettered congregations, as well as for ad libbing new sentiments. Truly—as the spirit moves you, you bring your brothers and sisters along.

American race-based human chattel slavery began right here in the Old Dominion in 1619. When the Lost Causers these days wave the Confederate flag around and bellow “states’ rights”, keep in mind that the “right” they were concerned about 160 years ago was the one to extend slavery into the new territories and thus maintain political power in Congress. Consider all those rebel armies the 1860s version of lobbyists, if you like. Southerners were afraid that if new states were admitted to the Union as free states, they’d be outvoted in Congress, as indeed they would be. So it was all about power—keeping it, and wielding it over other humans based on skin color.

For nearly 250 years, until the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified in 1865, slaves sang “Jacob’s Ladder” as an expression of faith and hope, and to draw the kind of strength it takes to persevere for that length of time. It’s served that purpose ever since, through Reconstruction, through the KKK, through the Depression, through Jim Crow, through the Civil Rights movement… And it still has value now, in the Gauleiter era.

One of my favorite versions is the one by Sweet Honey in the Rock that was used in Ken Burns’ seminal documentary The Civil War more than 25 years ago. Crank up the volume.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

All that strays and wanders

Sundown tonight marks the start of Yom HaShoah, Israel’s annual commemoration of the Holocaust. Amongst other ceremonies throughout the 24-hour period, tomorrow at 1000 local time, air raid sirens will sound and everyone in Israel will come to a halt for two minutes to reflect on the systematic attempt by Nazi Germany to eradicate the Jewish people on an industrial scale.

It seems to me that the entire world ought to be reflecting on this, given the rise of right-wing extremism who are becoming louder and more confident in their championing of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, christofacism, anti-Semitism, wealth inequity, homophobia and authoritarianism, not only in the US, but also in Europe.

Well, today’s entry for National Poetry Month is ancillary to Yom HaShoah. Johan Wolfgang von Goethe’s “On the Divine” enjoins us to follow the better angels of our nature, which we all too frequently do not. But the poem was an initial thread between two people from different worlds, and the tapestry it wove became a love that bridged those worlds and endured for decades.

Gerda Weissman, a Polish Jew, was not quite 21 in May 1945 when she and 150 other young women—last survivors of a death march that initially included 2000 concentration camp inmates—were discovered in Czechoslovakia by American soldiers. She could barely stand up, but that put her in better condition than her companions, so she greeted the Americans. As she gestured to the interior of an abandoned factory where they lay, she said, “Edel sei der Mensch, hilfreich und gut!”

Kurt Klein, the soldier to whom she spoke was struck by the emaciated, barely-alive girl quoting Goethe, “Noble be man, merciful and good!” As she was treated in a field hospital (where 30 of her companions died), Klein visited her and a friendship grew, which blossomed into romance. Klein and Weissman married the following year, and built a life for decades in Buffalo before retirement took them to Arizona. They had three children, eight grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren. Klein (a Jewish immigrant whose parents were murdered in Auschwitz) died in 2002; Weissman 22 years later.

They are an example of Goethe’s noble humanity, and I hold on to them as I look around me at the work of those who would destroy them.

“On the Divine”

Let man be noble,
Generous and good;
For that alone
Distinguishes him
From all the living
Beings we know.

Hail to the unknown
Higher beings
Of our intuition!
Let man resemble them;
Let his example
Teach us to believe in them.

For the realm of nature
Is unfeeling;
The sun sheds its light
Over evil and good
And the moon and the stars
Shine on the criminal
As on the best of us.

The wind and the rivers
The hail and the thunder
Storm on their way
And snatch one victim
After another
As they rush past.

So too does blind fortune
Grope through the crowd, now
Seizing a young boy’s
Curly-haired innocence
And now the bald pate
Of the old and guilty.

As great, everlasting,
Adamantine laws
Dictate, we must all
Complete the cycles
Of our existence.

Only mankind
Can do the impossible:
He can distinguish,
He chooses and judges,
He can give permanence
To the moment.

He alone may
Reward the good
And punish the wicked;
He may heal and save
And usefully bind
All that strays and wanders.

And we revere
The immortals, as if
They were human beings
Who do on a great scale
What little the best of us
Does or endeavors.

Let the noble man
Be generous and good,
Tirelessly achieving
What is just and useful:
Let him be a model
For those beings whom he surmises.

                        Translated by David Luke

  

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man

Today’s the day we mark the Big Gun of English poetry, William Shakespeare. We think this was his birthday in 1564, and we know it was the day he died, in 1616. Much of Shakespeare’s life would have been spent amidst pestilence; smallpox, typhus, cholera were just some of the diseases swirling about. It’s surprising that his works aren’t more drenched with catastrophic events beyond the making of man.

King Lear was first performed for James I in 1606, following a summer in which bubonic plague ravaged the country and closed down much of the entertainment venues and shops in London. We don’t know that this influenced Shakespeare, but the landscape of Lear is a blasted wasteland for much of the play, so…

As per usual, Lear’s downfall is of his own making, but, man, does he take half the cast with him into madness and death. About halfway through the play, when the deposed king is wandering the moors, he rages…against ingratitude.

Huh.

King Lear, Act III, Scene 2

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ th’ world,
Crack Nature’s moulds, all germains spill at once,
That makes ingrateful man!
Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters.
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.
I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children,
You owe me no subscription. Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man.
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That will with two pernicious daughters join
Your high-engender’d battles ‘gainst a head
So old and white as this! O! O! ’tis foul!

Frankly, I’ve always thought that—more than other Shakespearean tragic heroes—Lear pretty much deserved what he wrought. I mean—the guy couldn’t see Regan and Goneril for what they were; or Cordelia, for that matter. The tragedy was that—because he was king—his follies turned into horror for everyone around him.

Anyhow, as is my custom for Shakespeare day in National Poetry Month, here’s one of his sonnets, in which he compares love to disease. ‘Nuff said.

“Sonnet 147”

My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
Th’ uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,
At random from the truth vainly expressed:
    For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
    Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Seek for kind relief

News came yesterday morning that Pope Francis I, the first Latin American to be elected pontiff, died. He was 88 and had been in the role since 2013.

Francis (Born Jorge Mario Bergolio in Buenos Aires, Argentina) was a Vatican insider’s nightmare: a Jesuit and a man who believed in the teachings of Christ. You know—the teachings about the meek, the poor and the merciful. His progressive views on social issues (climate change effects on the environment, accountability and reconciliation for the multitude of priest-involved sexual abuse scandals, the place of women in church and society) made him a target of conservative clerics, and his ability to drive actual reform in Roman Catholic operations was limited. But he put a new face on the Church, and on the whole it was a benevolent, loving and compassionate one.

Which, of course, enraged that entire class of self-identified Christians who have sold their birthright for the mess of pottage that is right-wing racist, misogynistic fascism.

It’s very sad that one of Francis’s last acts on this plane was to pose for a photo op with an avatar of that right-wing faux Christian attention whore crowd, JD Vance. (Although he delegated the actual conversation with the thug to his Secretary of State, Pietro Cardinal Parolin. Who proceeded to give JD a lecture on compassion.) Pretty sure the Pontiff did not need the tsuris, and not entirely certain that the stress didn’t contribute to his demise.

Still, in honor of the compassionate pope, let’s have a poem for NPM today from William Blake. Blake, whose life spanned the time when the landscape of Britain was literally and metaphorically being changed by the Industrial Revolution, wasn’t a poet by trade. He was an printmaker, who painted and wrote poetry on the side. Basically home schooled, he learned to read well enough to rip through the Bible every which way, and he learned to appreciate art by engraving copies of classical drawings.

From these humble beginnings he grew into a powerful poet/artist who took on highly metaphysical subjects in both those forms. He was a Dissenter in both religion and artistic style, despising, for example, the works of Joshua Reynolds.

“On Another’s Sorrow”

Can I see another's woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another's grief,
And not seek for kind relief?

Can I see a falling tear,
And not feel my sorrow's share?
Can a father see his child
Weep, nor be with sorrow filled?

Can a mother sit and hear
An infant groan, an infant fear?
No, no!  never can it be!
Never, never can it be!
And can He who smiles on all
Hear the wren with sorrows small,
Hear the small bird's grief and care,
Hear the woes that infants bear –

And not sit beside the next,
Pouring pity in their breast,
And not sit the cradle near,
Weeping tear on infant's tear?

And not sit both night and day,
Wiping all our tears away?
Oh no! never can it be!
Never, never can it be!
He doth give his joy to all:
He becomes an infant small,
He becomes a man of woe,
He doth feel the sorrow too.

Think not thou canst sigh a sigh,
And thy Maker is not by:
Think not thou canst weep a tear,
And thy Maker is not near.

Oh He gives to us his joy,
That our grief He may destroy:
Till our grief is fled and gone
He doth sit by us and moan.

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Lifted from the no

I’m grateful today for the Judiciary Branch, which is basically the only official thing holding democracy together right now, the only element consistently saying “no” to the Kleptocrat. I don’t know how much longer they can keep it up, but they’re giving us space and time to get our resistance act together, for which I am very thankful.

Two things in particular happened last week:

In response to the administration’s request for a stay of the lower court’s order to return Kilmar Abrego García from the El Salvadoran prison to which he had been illegally deported, the Fourth Circuit panel ruled (even before Abrego García’s attorneys could file their response) that the government needs to pull its finger out and bring the man back.

It’s not only the fact of the ruling, it’s what Judge J. Harvie Wilkerson wrote that’s so breathtaking. (Full order here.) I quote:

“Upon review of the government’s motion, the court denies the motion for an emergency stay pending appeal and for a writ of mandamus. The relief the government is requesting is both extraordinary and premature.

“While we fully respect the executive’s robust assertion of its Article II powers, we shall not micromanage the efforts of a fine district judge attempting to implement the Supreme Court’s recent decision. It is difficult, in some cases, to get to the very heart of the matter—but in this case, it is not hard at all.

“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims, in essence, that because it has rid itself of custody, that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.

“The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process. If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that that position will prevail in proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order. In other words, if it thinks it’s got such good factual proof of that, what is it so worried about? It can present it, and it should prevail in getting him removed from this country.

“Moreover, the government has conceded that Abrego Garcia was wrongfully or mistakenly deported. Why then should it not make what was wrong right?

“Let me just repeat that. Why then should it not make what was wrong right?”

And:

“The executive possesses enormous powers to prosecute and to deport. But with powers come restraints.

“If today the executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies? That threat—even if not the actuality—would always be present.

“And the executive’s obligation to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed’—that’s a quote from the Constitution, Article II—would lose its meaning.

“Today, both the United States and the El Salvadoran government disclaim any authority and/or responsibility to return Abrego Garcia. We are told that neither government has the power to act. That result will be to leave matters generally—and Abrego Garcia specifically—in an interminable limbo without recourse to law of any sort.

“The basic differences between the branches mandate a serious effort and mutual respect. The respect that courts must accord the executive must be reciprocated by the executive’s respect for the courts.

“Too often today, this has not been the case—as calls for impeachment of judges for decisions the executive disfavors and exhortations to disregard court orders sadly illustrate.”

And, pointedly:

“It is, as we have noted, all too possible to see in this case an incipient crisis, but it may present an opportunity as well. We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.”

That is one beautiful piece of writing and I bow down before it.

My second cause is surprisingly from SCOTUS, which very early Saturday morning blocked, pending further order of the court, the administration from deporting any more Venezuelan immigrants from Texas. ICE was even at that moment sending buses full of said immigrants (alleged gang members, but without benefit of due process) to an airport to fly them away, and the buses literally turned around and returned the men to a detainment center.

Naturally, Alito and Thomas dissented, but it’s a remarkable thing that Roberts not only got the decision through, but so fast. (It's nowhere near as elegant as Wilkerson's, of course.)

These are both amazing things, and they fill my heart with thanks.

I know we’ve already had e.e. cummings before this month, but I’m always grateful for him, and this is a poem about gratitude:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

  

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Christians and pagans, both

In addition to co-founding (with Martin Niemoeller and Karl Barth) the German Confessing Church, pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a passionate anti-Nazi, who worked tirelessly against the Hitler regime from its ascension to power in 1933 until his execution in April 1945. His protests against the euthanasia program and against antisemitism as state policy provoked the Nazis to ban his church, and he basically went underground to operate “seminaries on the run”, training the ministers of the future; he believed wholeheartedly that the post-war world would need Christians to rebuild.

Even after he was arrested in 1943 for his work helping Jews escape, Bonhoeffer continued his ministry in prison. He was linked to the July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler and was moved to Buchenwald and then Flossenbürg to be executed by hanging in April 1945.

Here are a few things Bonhoeffer believed, which I’m pretty sure will not be echoed in evangelical churches these days:

“Silence in the face of evil is evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”

“Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.”

“The first service one owes in a community involves listening to them. Just as our love for God begins with listening to God’s word, the beginning of love for others is listening to them…We do God’s work for our brothers and sisters when we learn to listen to them.”

Today being Easter, my National Poetry Month entry is Bonhoeffer’s “Christians and Pagans”, which he wrote in July 1944, when he’d been in prison for more than a year. Its point—that God serves all, not just those calling themselves Christians—is also not something you’ll hear in evangelical churches these days.

“Christians and Pagans”

People turn to God when they’re in need,
plead for help, contentment, and for bread,
for rescue from their sickness, guilt, and death.
They all do so, both Christian and pagan.

People turn to God in God’s own need,
and find God poor, degraded, without roof or bread,
see God devoured by sin, weakness, and death.
Christians stand with God to share God’s pain.

God turns to all people in their need,
nourishes body and soul with God’s own bread,
takes up the cross for Christians and pagans, both,
and in forgiving both, is slain.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu