I think there's a kind of desperate hope built into poetry now
that one really wants, hopelessly, to save the world.
One is trying to say everything that can be said for the things that one loves while there's still time.
~ W. S. Merwin
TRYING TO WRITE A POEM AGAINST THE WAR
My daughter, who's as beautiful as the day,
hates politics: Face it, Ma,
they don't care what you think! All
passion, like Achilles,
she stalks off to her room,
to confide in her purple guitar and await
life's embassies. She's right,
of course: bombs will be hurled
at ordinary streets
and leaders look grave for the cameras,
and what good are more poems against war
the real subject of which
so often seems to be the poet's superior
moral sensitivities? I could
be mailing myself to the moon
or marrying a palm tree,
and yet what can we do
but offer what we have?
and so I spend
this cold gray glittering morning
trying to write a poem against war
that perhaps may please my daughter
who hates politics
and does not care much for poetry, either.
— Katha Pollit
Uni-verse
