Tonight, as we are on the cusp of having received 54,000 visits to this poetry blog, there are a few things that I would like to share with you. The easy part is this: as you may have noticed, the Udugi language is becoming an inseparable part of my poetry. The same is true of my photography. Both are part of a multimedia product that is a reflection of myself. I didn't really plan it that way, but it is that way, and I think it will continue. I hope you like it, and I thank you all for your interest and encouragement.
Now for the hard part.
Tonight I was reading about a heroine of the uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto, along with various other stories of the Holocaust. It is a history that is not dead, but lives with us and haunts us. I read until the pain and horror were too much for me to take, and I had to turn away from it.
Which poet was it who wrote about "man's inhumanity to man?" Wordsworth, I think. But what was true in his time, in the early nineteenth century, was magnified in the early twentieth century, and it is absolutely no less true now. It raises many questions. We must ask them, and we must answer them.
What is our response to the evil that we see all around us? How will we confront it? Because we must. Otherwise, as MLK told us, we begin to die.
Let us defend, not only ourselves, but all of our sisters and brothers. In doing that, win or lose, we will save ourselves. Let us, then, be heroes.
Shalom Salaam Paz Pax Peace.
Text © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler. Photo: Fergus McCarthy
