As many of you know, I have tried to be an advocate for peace for much of my adult life. And especially early on, my poetry was sometimes criticized for being “political”. I happen to think that all art is political, including poetry. There are, of course, good and bad poems of any type and heaven knows I’ve written my share of them.
This week I turn to one of the poems that had a profound influence on me. It made me realize that poetry could take on any subject and still be well-crafted and beautiful. Like many boomers, my consciousness was raised by a reaction to the war in Vietnam. Many writers and artists tried to respond to this and to influence others to use their artistic talents to respond.
Denise Levertov wrote this poem in the early 1970’s and I have a clear memory of first reading it and my reaction to it. Here was someone speaking out, but in a completely different way than the speakers at the rallies and protests I was attending. I continue to read it regularly and try, but fail, to emulate it.
See you next week.
Goodbye to Tolerance by Denise Levertov
Genial poets, pink-faced
earnest wits—
you have given the world
some choice morsels,
gobbets of language presented
as one presents T-bone steak
and Cherries Jubilee.
Goodbye, goodbye,
I don’t care
if I never taste your fine food again,
neutral fellows, seers of every side.
Tolerance, what crimes
are committed in your name.
And you, good women, bakers of nicest bread,
blood donors. Your crumbs
choke me, I would not want
a drop of your blood in me, it is pumped
by weak hearts, perfect pulses that never
falter: irresponsive
to nightmare reality.
It is my brothers, my sisters,
whose blood spurts out and stops
forever
because you choose to believe it is not your business.
Goodbye, goodbye,
your poems shut their little mouths,
your loaves grow moldy,
a gulf has split the ground between us,
and you won’t wave, you’re looking
another way.
We shan’t meet again—
unless you leap it, leaving
behind you the cherished
worms of your dispassion,
your pallid ironies, your jovial, murderous,
wry-humored balanced judgment,
leap over, un-balanced?
Then how our fanatic tears
would flow and mingle
for joy.