The Century Keeps Reloading |
Issue 18
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After Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est”
Wilfred, I read your poem and wanted to tell you that the gas didn't stop. It changed its clothes; all that. It doesn't always come in those clouds that crawl over the trenches anymore, but occasionally it does. It can also be on top of apartment buildings. Occasionally, phosphorus turning the dark. Sometimes it's the slow chemical of propaganda that's fed into through the TV screen, and boys learn that dying beautifully to control others is what it means to be a man. You told us about the old lie, but the lie outgrew memory. It's now in job posters and polished presentations. It can be found grinning from podiums. It envelops itself in patriotic music and carefully-cropped footage. It tells the poor that they must sacrifice for honor, and it tells mothers that the folded flag is good enough for their sons. I wish I could say anything with regards to progress. I cannot. Now, maybe, the boots are newer. The drones more precise. The bombs that can find a bedroom from continents away. We've come up with new, clever methods to kill, and more complex jargon to justify it. We say “strategic strike”, ‘neutralize”, ‘acceptable loss”, because ‘child', ‘school', ‘severed limb at breakfast' are too inhuman for civilized mouths. But your armies go forth, my soldiers. Not only in trenches – in desert, in cities, in refugee columns, in hospital corridors. Bent double, not always from mud but debt, coercion, fear, nationalism, inherited violence. The old machines still stand: pluck the young ones, feed them myth, and return them changed or unaltered. And the po Rise up again to the edge of the mass grave, and ask with our notebooks: what does language hold that the bodies cannot? I'm always thinking of you and your line. That hard, required disavowal. But I wonder if it will suffice to warn when the engines are so loud. Now, war comes before soldiers and into homes. Through screens. Through policy. Through sanctions. By the loaves and fishes. Borders that determine who should be rescued and who should be a statistic. You reported drowning in gas! In today's world, many drown in other ways: in the Mediterranean, in bureaucracy, in rubble dust, Silently following the missile, The long exile of life on exile. But, boys join the army anyway. Nevertheless, old men point at maps. Yet, the earth swallows him. Or, maybe it's not the war, We're near it but not quite close. Some of us hear blasts first-hand. Still others listen to them in news headlines. But the body knows. The body always knows. It experiences the crushing of defeat. The terrible burden of living. The night that follows uniformed footsteps. How grief can be citizenship. Then, this is my answer years later: You were right. You're correct there! But nevertheless, rightness has not been sufficient to save us. This old lie lives on because it's profitable. For empire needs new terms. Not because of the fragility of memory. Peace requires more than war does of us: imagination. But I go back to your poem, not a relic, instruction. You tell me to be careful, says you. Never lose your sense of humor and refrain from rhetoric. Never declare 'horror' as a valor. Obedience must not be confused with courage. So I am looking. The boy in fatigues who ought to be working at algebra. At the girl with her brother in her arms walking through concrete. In the hands of the doctor who breaks open the impossible hope. At the mother who can recall the sound of all the planes. And I am writing this because someone must continue to answer the lie. Not dulce. Not decorum. Not glory. Only this: War is a hungry mouth that goes on eating and poetry, when it won't turn away, One of the few hands is still trying to close it. |
COLLINS CHUKWUDI OPARAOCHA is a writer and poet. He lives and writes in Turkey.
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