FOR THE GREATER GOOD

POSTED IN contemporary poetry March 15, 2022

FOR THE GREATER GOOD

 

The virtual is invaded once more: good Samaritans, so eager to offer their help yet having the time for a quick selfie ( just in case, incoming local elections, local celebrities, one could only hope for applause); artists having a new occasion to sell their products, the online mourners, the connoisseurs of history, the experts in psychology, war strategy, politics, everybody is an adhoc expert, everyone has opinions, but there is no freedom of opinion, there are only the FOLLOWERS, their opinion counts: who’s not with them, it’s naturally against…
What a farce. What a cosmic fiasco. What an incredible hypocrisy. Ever the hypocrites, aren’t we? WHY NOW? What’s happening now is an ENCORE going on and on since, I don’t know, Korea in the ’60s?
When Afghanistan happened, Irak, Kosovo, Syria ( let me count the wars! this is so far what I personally have witnessed working with immigrants 🙁 ), where were the tears? The appalled faces? The HORROR? Children died there too…pregnant women…refugees, people died…humans died…buildings were destroyed…thousands of years of history bombed…
Why then nobody blinked in Europe? When refugees drowned, children drowned under our nose, where were the tears then?
Do we all have selective feelings? Death isn’t death until it happens in our neighborhood? Did somebody write poetry about the children killed in Kosovo, Irak, Afghanistan, or drowned in the Atlantic, in the Mediterranean Sea? I didn’t read many. Nor was I suffocated by online psychosis, nor tears.
So, can anybody tell me what’s new now? Why this pain is greater than the others? Why now I’m forced to pick a side?
Macron copied Zelenski, Zelenski changed one stand up with another, from comedy to drama (audience to be and the stakes to be high, an electorate, an entry into the EU, NATO, something better for his country, everything what’s better for his country). He asks, pleads, interprets, quotes Churchill, Shakespeare, he gets a standing ovation, women want to be with him, men want to be him … He just wants what’s best for his country. His country is bleeding. PEOPLE ARE AT WAR. I write these words and it makes my skin crawl. Zelenski wants NATO help. If NATO intervenes, it will open the way for the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. China promises (even if it is still speculation) economic and military aid to Putin. But what does China want? It can’t make promises out of the kindness of its heart. China wants Taiwan. Taiwan is under US protection. The United States is … a major part of NATO. And here I am stuck. Furthermore, my mind refuses to see the move on the chessboard. Could it be avoided a checkmate on humanity?
Zelensky and Putin are now playing live, but their kibitzers are much stronger, more draconian, more greedy, impatient. How many sacrifices have been made in history FOR THE GREATER GOOD?

 

M. M. Biela