Spoiled Milk

Poets Against the War ^ | 2/10/2003 | "Hank Lodge"

[risk]

It reaches up from within, you, them, us.
Cold, black, like a blood stain in the pasture.
Adventure for some, gain for others, oil of angels.
Silent in the night, an aching.

What distant urge brings up short, and blossoms,
Into raw coils of pneumatic flame?
Where did this demon spawn, surely not from better intentions?
Out into the night of pain, it comes.
It doesn't ask. It doesn't shrink.
It comes for them, and then you.

You're so sure. You're positive, you're safe in knowing,
Who's responsible for this malady of human exaspiration.
If only we had done this, if only we had done that.
What did you do?
I know. You did nothing.

Safe, sound, intact. Your sense of reassurance.
Mechanized response to cathode-ray reality.
Who told you exactly what was wicked, seething, impossible.
What world encircles and sustains you?

You speak of right and wrong. You stand up. You implore.
Yet pale tendrils of unfinished dreams curl up,
Wind and swirl about, seeping from dead nostrils you knew not.
Whisps of their agonies drift among them, like rivers.

But your dreams are vivid stories, explaining.
They begin brightly, but are consumed with unctious bile.
If you were born in peace, then let peace be among you.
What is the milk of human kindness?

[risk]

I posted this to Poets Against the War as an indictment of "pacifist" inaction against Saddam's tyranny. I gave myself the name "Hank Lodge," (a.k.a. Henry Cabot Lodge -- who opposed America's entrance into the League of Nations).

The spoiled milk is a reference to "Curds and Whey," i.e., the plight of the Kurds.

I was inspired by Lady Macbeth's famous soliloquy written by Shakespeare:

    Glamys thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be
    What thou art promis'd: yet doe I feare thy Nature.
    It is too full o'th' Milke of humane kindnesse,
    To catch the neerest way. --Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 5