Channel Firing

I’ve loved Thomas Hardy since high school. Although I had always loved reading, his novels, particularly Return of the Native and Jude the Obscure, came as a revelation to me. Their brutal honesty and unsentimental analysis of the human condition amazed me, especially since much of the literature I had previously encountered in high school struck me as sentimental nonsense.

I wrote my first research paper on his works after reading all of his novels. I earned an “A” on that paper, no small feat from Mr. Thomas. And, perhaps for the first time, I thought of becoming an English major instead of a physics major in college.

Later, I grew to love his poetry more than his novels. Although his works seem to have gone out of style because they “lack style,” I still believe that they convey a truth through their simple language that is often lacking in more popular works. And, most of all, I look for truth in literature.

“Channel Firing” is a simple poem that needs no explanation, but it conveys truths about war that are as true now as they were when this poem was written:

THAT night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment-day

And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds,

The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, “No”
It’s gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:

“All nations striving strong to make
.
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christ’s sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.

That this is not the judgment-hour
For some of them’s a blessed thing,
For if it were they’d have to scour
Hell’s floor for so much threatening. . .

Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need).”

So down we lay again. ‘I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,’
Said one, ‘than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century !’

And many a skeleton shook his head.
Instead of preaching forty year,
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.

Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

The Winds of Autumn

The first big fall storm swept through our area today, canceling our usual Monday hike, and probably putting on hold any hikes for the rest of the week.

Perhaps if we hadn’t had such a long, beautiful hiking season we would have risked it today, but we would have been drenched.

Deprived of an actual hike in the mountains, I did the next best thing and read Burton Watson’s translation of Saigyo, Poems of a Mountain Home.

How similar all human emotions must be when an 11th Century Japanese poet can so perfectly state my feelings at this particular moment in time.

Even in a person

most times indifferent

to things around him

they waken feelings

the first winds of autumn

No need to state the feelings, to do so would be redundant.

Saigyo even seems to understand why I have been hiking with a particular passion the last three weeks.

Not stopping to mark the trail,

let me push even deeper

into the mountain!

Perhaps there’s a place

where bad news can never reach me!

Cannot See the Sky

Doctor, my eyes have seen the years
And the slow parade of fears without crying
Now I want to understand
To see the evil and the good without hiding
You must help me if you can
…
Doctor, my eyes
Cannot see the sky
Is this the price for having learned how not to cry?
Jackson Browne

Jackson Browne’s “Doctor My Eyes” seems as relevant and as poignant today as it did in the years right after I returned from Vietnam.

Although today’s attacks were hardly unexpected, I tried to avoid looking at the news any more than necessary. And when I did look at it, I tried to not look too directly at it to avoid seeing any more than I wanted to see, like looking at the traffic accident that has delayed you for several hours but not really wanting to see the results.

The awful thing about war is that even if you’re not directly affected, even if neither you nor someone you love has to fight in it, you can’t help but be involved in it. Unless you’re willing to hide behind slogans or symbols, war makes you examine yourself, your beliefs, and the world you live in more rigorously than at any other time.

And when you look too closely at the world you see all the poverty, misery, and hatred that seem to entrap the human race and to make us less than human. As a soldier in Vietnam, I was at first shocked by the poverty of the Vietnamese we were trying to protect. I wanted to give money to each of the young children that begged for money every time I got out of my jeep. After awhile, though, when I realized that there weren’t enough coins in my pockets to help them all, I simply chased them away as soon as they came running up, angered as much by my inability to help them as by the constant reminder of how little they had.

A real danger is that we will stop seeing the truth, that the constant exposure to human misery will make us unable, or unwilling, to see it. The misery becomes invisible either because we are avoid certain places or because we don’t recognize it when we do see it.
Even worse, if we do see the truth it will no longer be able to move us. We will have become too hardened to feel the pain any longer, blinded by our own experiences

The Power of Sports

For a few hours tonight all was right with the universe as the Seattle Mariners crushed the Texas Rangers 16-1, winning their 114th game this year.

The Mariner’s dream season seemed to be unraveling after the attack on the WTC. A team that hadn’t had a major injury all year suddenly seemed jinxed. The day after the attack, David Bell pulled an abdominal muscle in batting practice and has been out since. Al Martin strained a tendon in his throwing arm and hasnât played for weeks. The versatile Mark McLemore injured his knee and was out for nearly a week. Worst of all, shortstop Carlos Guillen contracted tuberculosis and is questionable for the rest of the season.

Right after the season resumed the Mariners lost three straight games to Oakland, the first time they had lost three games in a row all year and the first time they lost an away series this year.

Tonight, perhaps for the first time since the WTC disaster, the Mariners seemed to regain their form, and nothing could go wrong. Jay Buhner hit his first home run of the year since coming back from a major injury. In winning their 114th game, the Mariners tied the AL record of the 1998 Yankees for most wins in single year, with three more games to go.

How wonderful, and perhaps silly, that a game can raise your spirits so high for a brief moment and make time stand still.