This morning, I was driving over the George Washington Bridge while listening the latest episode of the Ezra Klein show.
Klein was reminding us on his podcast about some of Trump's recent megalomaniac threats against the people of Iran.
"Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran," he said in one of his unhinged "Truth Social" posts.
Meaning, in context, that he planned to blow up civilian infrastructure—including bridges—in Iran.
And I looked about me on the GW bridge and thought—what would it be like to have to live under the threat of all this being blown up from beneath me right now—just because some raving madman wants to salve his wounded pride?
Is that our country? Is that what we have come to represent to the world?
I remembered that evening—last Tuesday—when it seemed like Trump really was about to unleash bombs on populated civilian areas across Iran.
That day when he promised to end a "whole civilization" by nightfall.
"The dark is filled with means which are/ Men’s plots to murder children"—as the poet Stephen Spender wrote, of the age of nuclear warfare...
That can't be what our country has become, right? That can't be all we've been reduced to. Plots to murder the innocent.
And then I thought of another bridge—Hart Crane's. And yes, I know he was talking about a different New York metro area bridge, but still—
His poem too is full of images of war—American war: the "Ghoul-mound of man's perversity [...] And fraternal massacre!"
Yet the bridge in his poem stands for something else in America that can emerge in place of the senseless slaughter.
In Crane's hands, the bridge becomes as well a rainbow—a symbol of a new covenant; a promise of peace over a world too long wracked with death and wickedness.
And see! the rainbow's arch — how shimmeringly stands
Above the Cape's ghoul-mound, O joyous seer!
[...]
O, upward from the dead
Thou bringest tally, and a pact, new bound
Of living brotherhood!
Oh may it be so, Hart Crane; may it be so.
No comments:
Post a Comment