Poem: "To a Terrorist," by Stephen Dunn, from Between Angels (Norton).

To a Terrorist

For the historical ache,
the ache passed down
which finds its circumstance and becomes
the present ache,
I offer this poem
without hope,
knowing there's nothing, not even revenge,
which alleviatesa life like yours.

I offer it as one
might offer his father's ashes
to the wind, a gesture
when there's nothing else to do.

Still, I must say to you:
I hate your good reasons.
I hate the hatefulness that makes you fall
in love with death,
your own included.

Perhaps you're hating me now,
I who own my own house
and live in a country so muscular,
so smug, it thinks its terror is meant
only to mean well, and to protect.

Christ turned his singular cheek,
one man's holiness another's absurdity.
Like you, the rest of us obey the sting,
the surge.

I'm just speaking out loud
to cancel my silence.
Consider it an old impulse,
doomed to become mere words.

The first poet probably spoke to thunder
and, for a while, believed
thunder had an ear and a choice.

This is me in a rehearsal for my play "Dancing Backwards". 

It's the birthday of English poet Dame Edith Sitwell, born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England (1887). She was also a well-known eccentric, who like to appear in elaborate Elizabethan costumes and who once gave a performance of her poetry by reading it through a megaphone. Late in her life, she became a popular guest on English television. She said, "I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of goldfish."

Please check out the two poems that I uploaded to CBC's "ZeD" website in the last two weeks. Their titles are "Grasping" and "Things I Don't Have". Here's a link to my page on that website:

http://donaldb.zed.cbc.ca

Jack Kerouac wrote in On the Road , "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."

"The purpose of all the major religious traditions is not to construct big temples on the outside, but to create temples of goodness and compassion inside, in our hearts."

- His Holiness The Dalai Lama, The Good Heart

"It is easy. All you have to do is tell the people they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." - Hermann Goering

(Hmm... Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Think about George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.)

"The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any." - Fred Astaire