Ernest Rosenthal

professor Ernest Rosenthal presented the following didactic poem, dedicated to Helen Caldicott (a leader in the worldwide movement against nuclear weapons).

DON'T HANG EICHMAN:

there is a grove of saplings my father planted, 
in my name, in Zion;

they must be mighty trees by now...

until their arms extend their hospitality 
to all who seek their shade, I shall not rest..

...says our president:  "as we observe a week of Holocaust Commemorations, in order to increase awareness and temper knowledge with morality and human decency........"

suspended in the amniotic fluid of consensus about past events, and undemanding of the risks of controversial commitment to the present  

- what lessons have we learned?

are our leaders teaching us no longer to project the dark side  that inhabits every one of us onto the 'other', pronouncing him the enemy?

have we become empowered to perceive that men will sacrifice their lives - whatever damnable, contemptible, dogmatic doctrine shine before their inward melting eye?

- when, after World War I, the victors forced the vanquished to say 'uncle' –

how they reacted should have come as no surprise: frustration found a scapegoat - they, found us!

 not all are guilty;  all are responsible!

one hundred thousand killed in Guatemala! - if not by the ostensible consent of you and me, yet paid for by inexorable cash flow of deductions made from our pay-checks, to dictators doing our bidding;

is there a digit missing, to legitimize this as a holocaust? (Stalin once called a single death a tragedy; a million a statistic)...

South Africa:  a massacre memorialized by yet another, bigger massacre!

on the receiving end of violence - superior;  organized - the mere dimensions

seem to matter little:  

a holocaust by any other name smells of the burning and decaying flesh of victims – innocent pawns of games played in the parlors of the powerful...

whence issues violence must be the center of concern - not whom it strikes!

if Eichman is to hang, Eichman can find a rational for hanging others;  

(you may remember that he beat us to the punch!)

impotent retribution, paradoxically, spawns escalating retribution: as many alien eyes for every Israeli eye as Israel's constituents support is no improvement on Judaic law!

Christ's answer, taken metaphorically: vulnerability accruing to defense of weakness, could have been;  but it was scarcely tried;

the power arrogated by the gun bears witness to the cowardice of  power...

I saw the Fascists and the Nazis come - but never go away; under duress,

I had to clean their toilets - much to their diversion;

upon the second try I managed to escape, across the border, waited for U.S.

immigration quotas to materialize - in constant danger to be apprehended and

returned, across the border into German arms...

(but I was luckier than was my cousin, who was never seen again)..

how many Salvadorean refugees suffer such fate, each day?

are we attuned to the interminable throttled moans of torture victims whose fate

we have the power - not the will - to mediate?

serving as soldiers in the U.S. army, along with native sons, some of my fellow

escapees from Hitler dubbed Mrs. Roosevelt a 'nigger lover';  (I could not find that in the genteel dictionary)..

I have a letter, just received, quoting one Elie Wiesel, Chairman, U.S. Holocaust

Memorial Council - whose holocaust credentials are superior to anything that any one of us may claim - whom I shall quote (totally out of cadence, but entirely within this context):

"I belong to a generation traumatized by mass murder, considered at that time a

normal event. Whoever has seen a death-camp will tell you:  The impossible does become possible, the unthinkable does come to pass...Auschwitz may belong to the past, but Hiroshima is part of our future."

can we, in time, cast off the shackles of beliefs dividing us? possession of  'the truth' ensnares us every time: it leads to bumper stickers; heresies - and holocausts!

unending inquiry, leading to question marks, shall set us free!

- is this the hallmark of this university?..

PRE-EMPTIVE APOLOGIA

[LAMENT OF A MULTI-SYLLABIC POLEMICAL PUNSTER]

…what's a poet to do

who wants to strut his stuff before an audience

yet avoid stepping on each bushy, switching tail

of multiple prehensile pieties protruding from

the camouflage of make-believe enlightenment?

- if his contempt for all he holds contemptible 
matches his reverence for life and his irreverence 
for reverends thumping idiosyncratic tomes in 
permanent perpetuation of encyclopedic 
ignorance,worshiping divinities this would-be 
Walter Mitty prophet alliterating in the wilderness,

believes to be the meanest mothers of the universe?

- he is as welcome as the Anti-Christ at Baptist

Bible Belt  Revival Prayer Breakfast Picknicks;

- a vegetarian at the Sizzler Steak House

Special Combination Platter Party;

- the married codger at the Condominium 
Singles' Penthouse Get-Acquainted 
Get-Together;

- a pregnant med-fly at the merrymaking of

the California Citrus Growers' Harvest Ball;

- Arafat's emissary of the P.L.O. at

Theo Herzl's Birthday celebration;

- Noriega waltzing with Ortega, tripping the

light fantastic at the President's Inaugural;

- an Atheistic versifier's secular harangue at

Hallmark Greeting Cards' Prestigious Prize Awards…

- a freight train, cluttering alliterated 
landscapes, clattering rails like endless 
closely-coupled metaphoric box cars 
of unphatomable content rattling 
redundant cadences; blasphemous 

assonance interminably-

hyphenated humdrum conundrums 
abundant in redundancies;

multi-syllabic puns of a political polemicist 
pouring from every apprehensive pore, 
railing against preposterous predestination-

self-proclaimed by this presumptuous nation

---- with you, waiting for the caboose…

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