Complicity
Nov 21 2010


I was born in the middle of the 20th century.
Which history will remember
as the bloodiest,
ever.
Even the word genocide
had to be invented.

The rich got richer
nothing new.
We were urged to consume
and complied, gladly;
yet happiness
somehow eluded us.
And in the end
bequeathed our debt
to generations to come.
Bu inattention, perhaps
or simple gluttony —
a hot-house earth,
bills deferred
printing money.

So who in the future will believe
I never went to war,
never saw
a dismembered body?
And that I paid my way,
obeyed
my frugal father —
didn’t gawk, fridge door open wide,
lights off, behind me.
And even though I watched the news
faithfully
every night,
couldn’t really do much;
except disapprove,
lead my life
as honourably as possible.

When I reach 100
they will marvel at this old man,
a witness to so many portentous events
that radically changed the world.
Not knowing that all I remember
are sweet corn, and ripe red tomatoes
fresh from my garden.
The only child,
my nose still buried
in that newborn baby smell.
And how it felt
first time ever in love.

And that my main regret
is how helpless I was
to change anything.
My complacency
when the world burned.
When the screams of its victims
were nicely out of hearing.




A political poem, a rare indulgence: about bourgeois complacency, complicity, and powerlessness. The key is in the very first stanza: “Even the word “genocide” / had to be invented.”

I wrote this poem because I feel terribly embarrassed by, and ashamed of, “my” generation; of which, paradoxically, I don’t really feel a part. We baby boomers, squandering the noble legacy of “the greatest generation”, who saved the world from Hitler. Consuming the planet in an orgy of greed. And shamelessly leaving a mountain of debt to out children – having borrowed against the future for immediate gratification; having heedlessly spewed CO2 into the oceans and air.

History will see me as complicit; even though distance and circumstance have somehow left me exempt from the cruelty and depravity of my era.

I see myself as complacent and ineffective.

The truth probably is that most of us really are powerless. And that our small diurnal lives go on despite the great machinations of history; that they go on much the same as they always have; and that the essentials remain unchanged.

And also that bourgeois values may be both our undoing, and our salvation: tending to our own garden may be too little; and, at the same time, just enough.