"air of atrocity" re-visited

George Oppen

18.

It is the air of atrocity,
An event as ordinary

As a President.
A plume of smoke, visible at a distance
In which people burn.



19.

Now in the helicopters the casual will
Is atrocious

Insanity in high places,
If it is true we must do these things
We must cut our throats

The fly in the bottle

Insane, the insane fly

Which, over the city
Is the bright light of shipwreck



20.

—They await

War, and the news
Is war

As always
That the juices may flow in them
Tho the juices lie.

Great things have happpened
On the earth and given it history, armies
And the ragged hordes moving and the passions
Of that death. But who escapes
Death

Among these riders
Of the subway.

They know
By now as I know

Failure and the guilt
Of failure.
As in Hardy's poem of Christmas

We might half-hope to find the animals
In the sheds of a nation
Kneeling at midnight,

Farm animals,
Draft animals, beasts for slaughter
Because it would mean they have forgiven us,

Or which is the same thing,
That we do not altogether matter.



40.

Whitman: 'April 19, 1864

The capitol grows upon one in time, especially as they have got the great figure on top of it now, and you can see it very well. It is a great bronze figure, the Genius of Liberty I suppose. It looks wonderful toward sundown. I love to go and look at it. The sun when it is nearly down shines on the headpiece and it dazzles and glistens like a big star: it looks quite



curious . . .'



—from "Of Being Numerous" by George Oppen



PennSound has 2 recordings of Oppen reading from "Of Being Numerous," one complete performance from 1967, and another of sections 1-22 from 1979

& here are a few more biographical notes, in addition to the 2 sites above

"white death" (2004)

("white death" - Carson Pass, CA - 2004)

Fisk: "I saw the results, however . . "

Iran's official history of the eight-year war with Iraq states that Saddam first used chemical weapons against it on 13 January 1981. AP's correspondent in Baghdad, Mohamed Salaam, was taken to see the scene of an Iraqi military victory east of Basra. "We started counting - we walked miles and miles in this fucking desert, just counting," he said. "We got to 700 and got muddled and had to start counting again ... The Iraqis had used, for the first time, a combination - the nerve gas would paralyse their bodies ... the mustard gas would drown them in their own lungs. That's why they spat blood."

At the time, the Iranians claimed that this terrible cocktail had been given to Saddam by the US. Washington denied this. But the Iranians were right. The lengthy negotiations which led to America's complicity in this atrocity remain secret - Donald Rumsfeld was one of President Ronald Reagan's point-men at this period - although Saddam undoubtedly knew every detail. But a largely unreported document, "United States Chemical and Biological Warfare-related Dual-use exports to Iraq and their possible impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War", stated that prior to 1985 and afterwards, US companies had sent government-approved shipments of biological agents to Iraq. These included Bacillus anthracis, which produces anthrax, andEscherichia coli (E. coli). That Senate report concluded that: "The United States provided the Government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-systems programs, including ... chemical warfare agent production facility plant and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment."

Nor was the Pentagon unaware of the extent of Iraqi use of chemical weapons. In 1988, for example, Saddam gave his personal permission for Lt-Col Rick Francona, a US defence intelligence officer - one of 60 American officers who were secretly providing members of the Iraqi general staff with detailed information on Iranian deployments, tactical planning and bomb damage assessments - to visit the Fao peninsula after Iraqi forces had recaptured the town from the Iranians. He reported back to Washington that the Iraqis had used chemical weapons to achieve their victory. The senior defence intelligence officer at the time, Col Walter Lang, later said that the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis "was not a matter of deep strategic concern".

I saw the results, however. On a long military hospital train back to Tehran from the battle front, I found hundreds of Iranian soldiers coughing blood and mucus from their lungs - the very carriages stank so much of gas that I had to open the windows - and their arms and faces were covered with boils. Later, new bubbles of skin appeared on top of their original boils. Many were fearfully burnt. These same gases were later used on the Kurds of Halabja. No wonder that Saddam was primarily tried in Baghdad for the slaughter of Shia villagers, not for his war crimes against Iran.

We still don't know - and with Saddam's execution we will probably never know - the extent of US credits to Iraq, which began in 1982. The initial tranche, the sum of which was spent on the purchase of American weapons from Jordan and Kuwait, came to $300m. By 1987, Saddam was being promised $1bn in credit. By 1990, just before Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, annual trade between Iraq and the US had grown to $3.5bn a year. Pressed by Saddam's foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, to continue US credits, James Baker then Secretary of State, but the same James Baker who has just produced a report intended to drag George Bush from the catastrophe of present- day Iraq - pushed for new guarantees worth $1bn from the US.
. . .

The whole truth died with Saddam Hussein in the Baghdad execution chamber yesterday. Many in Washington and London must have sighed with relief that the old man had been silenced for ever.

—Robert Fisk: "He Takes His Secrets to the Grave. Our Complicity Dies with Him"

"Earth's Winter Song"

EARTH'S WINTER SONG

1

The beautiful young men and women!
Standing against the war their courage
has made a green place in my heart.

In the dark and utter destitution of winter
the face of the girl is a fresh moon
radiant with the Truth she loves,
the Annunciation, the promise
faith keeps in life.

Seed in the blind Earth, strikn by cold,
the spirits of the new Sun seek you out!

The face of Mary is a Star raying out.
And at the brest of her breth
"the Sun-element, the Child,
"forming Itself out of the clouds which have
"the Sun-rays in the atmosphere

"pouring thru them."

2

In the great storm of feer and rage
the heds of evil appeer and disappeer,
the old dragon whose scales are corpses of men
and whose breth blasts crops and burns villages
demands again his hecatomb,
our lives and outrage going up into his powr
over us. Wearing the unctuous mask of Johnson,
from his ass-hole emerging the hed of Humphrey,
he bellows and begins again over Asia and America
the slaughter of the innocents and the reign of wrath.

But our lives are drivn downwards too, within, deep down.
The spirits of the living stars return where the Sun
underground works his light magic
stirring the deepest roots. We have been drivn
deep into the heart of our yearning, into the store
from which youth will rise, new shoots
of the spring-tide. O the green spring-tide
of individual volition for the communal good,
the Christ-promise of brotherhood, the lover's
promise of the self's fulfillment!
"The body of inner Earth is alive in mid-Winter."

In the Under Ground:
the sublime Crèche—the lamp's faint glow,
the enormous shadows—the few
frightend shadows—the three
magi or magicians seeing in the Child
the child of the lore—Joseph
whose faith is father, and the girl
whose virginity engenders—and the new
lord of the true life, of Love .

We remember, was always born,
as now, in a time of despair,
having no place there at the Inn,
hunted down by Herod's law,
fleeing by night, secreted in Egypt.

Love in His innocence
radiant in His depth of time and night
has waited and now—this is
the message of Christmas—returns once more,
bearing the light of the Sun
fair in His face.


—Robert Duncan, from Bending the Bow, New Directions Books, 1968,
the poet's idiosyncratic spelling left intact