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Author Archives: pt
The Editors – What We Deserve
It’s hard to make sense of so much of the news without some kind of basis for determining what, exactly, each of us really deserves. We mean that in the most literal sense. Certainly a maid cleaning a hotel room deserves some kind of security in her own person, while a man accused of a crime is entitled, as well, to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. The process of reconciling these seemingly-at-odds principles takes time and thought, but not much more than that. A bit of social trust is what makes it work – that and, as our thought began, a sense of what we all deserve.
John Locke laid the right foundation for all this, we think. Beginning with the idea that all of the earth had been given, collectively, by God to all of mankind, he then asked how any one of us could rightly claim a slice of it for ourselves. His thought experiment in response involved plucking a single fruit from a single tree, and taking a bite. Making that small part of creation a small part of ourselves held some propriety for him. More than we can digest would be too much; as much as we need, and can find and grasp on our own, a good amount. And the land itself had a similar logic within it. As we reach out hands into the soil, mix our blood and sweat with it, and most importantly make it better, we earn some right to that small piece of the earth.
Make it better, then, becomes our demand of those who seek our trust, and certainly our demand of those who seek our votes. Make it better.
Angel Conoesto – Poem (“Again Falling”)
Again falling, my hand opens
and the air is my salvation.
Again falling, I see the layered airs of my city
and its dirty streets, opening to the secret other
city, the home of a thousand lost children
and their grizzled fathers with work-locked
hands, again falling to the last outpost
of their aspirations, or their first occasions
of grief. Again falling, can you see
that all of it, all of
them are here?
Sam Rempell – Poem (“The Night Before the War Began”)
The night before
The war began,
We began
With nothing else.
We began as
An open hand,
Like an open book,
Beginning, for example, with
The letter A:
An arrowhead, and
The letter I: watching
The sky,
Thinking the thoughts
Of the first man alive.
Robinson Jeffers – Poem (“Be Angry at the Sun”)
That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors,
This republic, Europe, Asia.
Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.
You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.
Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.
The.American.Word. 