The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, June 5, 1944.
War is a bloody, killing business. You’ve got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours.
-- General George S. Patton's speech, given ahead of the Allied invasion
a drizzling rain ...
washing their blood
into their blood
Michael McClintock
Normandy beach ...
this small white rock
washed clean
Anne LB Davidson
beach pebbles ...
these jagged black rocks
once were shrapnel
Denis M. Garrison
...Just as in World War II, today patriotic American workers are building the arsenal of democracy and serving the cause of freedom.
-- Joe Biden's Oct. 19 2023 primetime address about the Israel-Hamas War, in which he described the American arms industry in Remarkably GlOWING TERMS.
the butcher
throwing more meat
into his grinder
the wall-mounted TV blasts
war after war ...
midnight thunder
deafening as metal sheets
across the sky ...
again my father fights
his war of ghostly pasts
Chen-ou Liu
War is the most striking instance of the failure of intelligence to master the problem of human relationships.
-- Harry Elmer Barnes
To conclude today's Special Feature post, I would like to share with you the following tanka, written by by the most famous Buddhist monk-poet Saigyo’s (1118–1190 AD), with the longest prefatory note:
In the world of men it came to be a time of warfare. Throughout the country -- west, east, north, and south -- there was no place where the war was not being fought. The count of those dying because of it climbed continually and reached an enormous number. It was beyond belief! And for what on earth was this struggle taking place? A most tragic state of affairs
There's no gap or break
In the rank of those marching
Under the hill:
An endless line of dying men,
Moving on and on and on ...
FYI: This lengthy and sociopolitically conscious prefatory note establishes the thematic and emotive context of the poem while the tanka visually enhances the tone and mood. Saigyo's use of repetition in the last line adds extra emotional weight and psychological depth to the poem... (For detailed comments, see "To the Lighthouse: Joshi (Prefatory Note) as a Poetic Device" and "Poetic Musings: Dying Men Tanka by Saigyo Hoshi.")
Added:
the rusty door
of grandpa's backyard bunker ...
D-Day news on mute
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