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Mahmoud Darwish was born on March 13, 1941 in Al Birweh, Palestine, into a land-owning Sunni Muslim family. During the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, his village was destroyed and his family fled to Lebanon. They returned the following year, secretly re-entering Israel.

As a young man, Darwish faced house arrest and imprisonment for his political activism and for publicly reading his poetry. He joined the official Communist Party of Israel, the Rakah, in the 1960s. In 1970, he left for Russia, where he attended the University of Moscow for one year, and then moved to Cairo. He lived in exile for twenty-six years, between Beirut and Paris, until his return to Israel in 1996, after which he settled in Ramallah in the West Bank.

Considered Palestine's most eminent poet, Darwish published his first collection of poems, Leaves of Olives, in 1964, when he was 22. Since then, Darwish has published approximately thirty poetry and prose collections which have been translated into more than twenty-two languages.

Some of his more recent poetry titles include The Butterfly's Burden (Copper Canyon Press, 2006), Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems (2003), Stage of Siege (2002), The Adam of Two Edens (2001), Mural (2000), Bed of the Stranger (1999), Psalms (1995), Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? (1994), and The Music of Human Flesh (1980).

Darwish was an editor for a Palestine Liberation Organization monthly journal and the director of the group's research center. In 1987 he was appointed to the PLO executive committee, and resigned in 1993 in opposition to the Oslo Agreement. He served as the editor-in-chief and founder of the literary review Al-Karmel, published out of the Sakakini Centre since 1997
About Darwish's work, the poet Naomi Shihab Nye has said, "Mahmoud Darwish is the Essential Breath of the Palestinian people, the eloquent witness of exile and belonging, exquisitely tuned singer of images that invoke, link, and shine a brilliant light into the world's whole heart. What he speaks has been embraced by readers around the world—his in an utterly necessary voice, unforgettable once discovered."

His awards and honors include the Ibn Sina Prize, the Lenin Peace Prize, the 1969 Lotus prize from the Union of Afro-Asian Writers, France's Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres medal in 1997, the 2001 Prize for Cultural Freedom from the Lannan Foundation, the Moroccan Wissam of intellectual merit handed to him by King Mohammad VI of Morocco, and the USSR's Stalin Peace Prize.

Darwish died on August 9, 2008, in Houston, TX, after complications from heart surgery.

Source: Poets.org: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1062

Illustration by hamoud.deviantart.com

I Belong There 
translated by Carolyn Forché and Munir Akash

I belong there. I have many memories. I was born as everyone is born.
I have a mother, a house with many windows, brothers, friends, and a prison cell
with a chilly window! I have a wave snatched by seagulls, a panorama of my own.
I have a saturated meadow. In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon,
a bird's sustenance, and an immortal olive tree.
I have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey.
I belong there. When heaven mourns for her mother, I return heaven to
   her mother.
And I cry so that a returning cloud might carry my tears.
To break the rules, I have learned all the words needed for a trial by blood.
I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a
   single word: Home.

I Didn't Apologize to the Well  
translated by Fady Joudah

I didn't apologize to the well when I passed the well,
I borrowed from the ancient pine tree a cloud
and squeezed it like an orange, then waited for a gazelle
white and legendary. And I ordered my heart to be patient:
Be neutral as if you were not of me! Right here
the kind shepherds stood on air and evolved
their flutes, then persuaded the mountain quail toward
the snare. And right here I saddled a horse for flying toward
my planets, then flew. And right here the priestess
told me: Beware of the asphalt road and the cars
and walk upon your exhalation. Right here
I slackened my shadow and waited, I picked the tiniest
rock and stayed up late. I broke the myth and I broke.
And I circled the well until I flew from myself
to what isn't of it. A deep voice shouted at me:
This grave isn't your grave. So I apologized.
I read verses from the wise holy book, and said
to the unknown one in the well: Salaam upon you the day
you were killed in the land of peace, and the day you rise
from the darkness of the well alive!

Illustration by Abro via Flickr

Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time
Close to the gardens of broken shadows,
We do what prisoners do,
And what the jobless do:
We cultivate hope.

A country preparing for dawn. We grow less intelligent
For we closely watch the hour of victory:
No night in our night lit up by the shelling
Our enemies are watchful and light the light for us
In the darkness of cellars.

Here there is no "I".
Here Adam remembers the dust of his clay.

On the verge of death, he says:
I have no trace left to lose:
Free I am so close to my liberty. My future lies in my own hand.
Soon I shall penetrate my life,
I shall be born free and parentless,
And as my name I shall choose azure letters...

You who stand in the doorway, come in,
Drink Arabic coffee with us
And you will sense that you are men like us
You who stand in the doorways of houses
Come out of our morningtimes,
We shall feel reassured to be
Men like you!

When the planes disappear, the white, white doves
Fly off and wash the cheeks of heaven
With unbound wings taking radiance back again, taking possession
Of the ether and of play. Higher, higher still, the white, white doves
Fly off. Ah, if only the sky
Were real [a man passing between two bombs said to me].

Cypresses behind the soldiers, minarets protecting
The sky from collapse. Behind the hedge of steel
Soldiers piss—under the watchful eye of a tank—
And the autumnal day ends its golden wandering in
A street as wide as a church after Sunday mass...

[To a killer] If you had contemplated the victim’s face
And thought it through, you would have remembered your mother in the
Gas chamber, you would have been freed from the reason for the rifle
And you would have changed your mind: this is not the way
to find one’s identity again.

The siege is a waiting period
Waiting on the tilted ladder in the middle of the storm.

Alone, we are alone as far down as the sediment
Were it not for the visits of the rainbows.

We have brothers behind this expanse.
Excellent brothers. They love us. They watch us and weep.
Then, in secret, they tell each other:
"Ah! if this siege had been declared..." They do not finish their sentence:
"Don’t abandon us, don’t leave us."

Our losses: between two and eight martyrs each day.
And ten wounded.
And twenty homes.
And fifty olive trees...
Added to this the structural flaw that
Will arrive at the poem, the play, and the unfinished canvas.

A woman told the cloud: cover my beloved
For my clothing is drenched with his blood.

If you are not rain, my love
Be tree
Sated with fertility, be tree
If you are not tree, my love
Be stone
Saturated with humidity, be stone
If you are not stone, my love
Be moon
In the dream of the beloved woman, be moon
[So spoke a woman
to her son at his funeral]

Oh watchmen! Are you not weary
Of lying in wait for the light in our salt
And of the incandescence of the rose in our wound
Are you not weary, oh watchmen?

A little of this absolute and blue infinity
Would be enough
To lighten the burden of these times
And to cleanse the mire of this place.

It is up to the soul to come down from its mount
And on its silken feet walk
By my side, hand in hand, like two longtime
Friends who share the ancient bread
And the antique glass of wine
May we walk this road together
And then our days will take different directions:
I, beyond nature, which in turn
Will choose to squat on a high-up rock.

On my rubble the shadow grows green,
And the wolf is dozing on the skin of my goat
He dreams as I do, as the angel does
That life is here...not over there.

In the state of siege, time becomes space
Transfixed in its eternity
In the state of siege, space becomes time
That has missed its yesterday and its tomorrow.

The martyr encircles me every time I live a new day
And questions me: Where were you? Take every word
You have given me back to the dictionaries
And relieve the sleepers from the echo’s buzz.

The martyr enlightens me: beyond the expanse
I did not look
For the virgins of immortality for I love life
On earth, amid fig trees and pines,
But I cannot reach it, and then, too, I took aim at it
With my last possession: the blood in the body of azure.

The martyr warned me: Do not believe their ululations
Believe my father when, weeping, he looks at my photograph
How did we trade roles, my son, how did you precede me.
I first, I the first one!

The martyr encircles me: my place and my crude furniture are all that I have changed.
I put a gazelle on my bed,
And a crescent of moon on my finger
To appease my sorrow.

The siege will last in order to convince us we must choose an enslavement that does no harm, in fullest liberty!

Resisting means assuring oneself of the heart’s health,
The health of the testicles and of your tenacious disease:
The disease of hope.

And in what remains of the dawn, I walk toward my exterior
And in what remains of the night, I hear the sound of footsteps inside me.

Greetings to the one who shares with me an attention to
The drunkenness of light, the light of the butterfly, in the
Blackness of this tunnel!

Greetings to the one who shares my glass with me
In the denseness of a night outflanking the two spaces:
Greetings to my apparition.

My friends are always preparing a farewell feast for me,
A soothing grave in the shade of oak trees
A marble epitaph of time
And always I anticipate them at the funeral:
Who then has died...who?

Writing is a puppy biting nothingness
Writing wounds without a trace of blood.

Our cups of coffee. Birds green trees
In the blue shade, the sun gambols from one wall
To another like a gazelle
The water in the clouds has the unlimited shape of what is left to us
Of the sky. And other things of suspended memories
Reveal that this morning is powerful and splendid,
And that we are the guests of eternity.

"By nature's law, man is at peace with man till some aggression is committed, which, by the same law, authorizes one to destroy another as his enemy." --Thomas Jefferson to Edmond C. Genet, 1793. ME 9:136

"Peace... has been our principle, peace is our interest, and peace has saved to the world this only plant of free and rational government now existing in it... However, therefore, we may have been reproached for pursuing our Quaker system, time will affix the stamp of wisdom on it, and the happiness and prosperity of our citizens will attest its merit. And this, I believe, is the only legitimate object of government and the first duty of governors, and not the slaughter of men and devastation of the countries placed under their care in pursuit of a fantastic honor unallied to virtue or happiness; or in gratification of the angry passions or the pride of administrators excited by personal incidents in which their citizens have no concern." --Thomas Jefferson to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1811. ME 13:41

"The state of peace is that which most improves the manners and morals, the prosperity and happiness of mankind." --Thomas Jefferson to Noah Worcester, 1817. ME 18:299

 Peace as National Policy

"Peace with all nations, and the right which that gives us with respect to all nations, are our object." --Thomas Jefferson to C. W. F. Dumas, 1793. ME 9:56

"Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1802. ME 10:318

"[Montesquieu wrote in his Spirit of Laws, IX,c.2:] 'The spirit of monarchy is war and enlargement of domain: peace and moderation are the spirit of a republic." --Thomas Jefferson: copied into his Commonplace Book.

"Believing that the happiness of mankind is best promoted by the useful pursuits of peace, that on these alone a stable prosperity can be founded, that the evils of war are great in their endurance, and have a long reckoning for ages to come, I have used my best endeavors to keep our country uncommitted in the troubles which afflict Europe, and which assail us on every side." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Pittsburgh Republicans, 1808. ME 16:324

"Determined as we are to avoid, if possible, wasting the energies of our people in war and destruction, we shall avoid implicating ourselves with the powers of Europe, even in support of principles which we mean to pursue. They have so many other interests different from ours, that we must avoid being entangled in them. We believe we can enforce these principles as to ourselves by peaceable means, now that we are likely to have our public councils detached from foreign views." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine, 1801. ME 10:223

"Nothing but the failure of every peaceable mode of redress, nothing but dire necessity, should force us from the path of peace which would be our wisest pursuit, to embark in the broils and contentions of Europe and become a satellite to any power there." --Thomas Jefferson to William Dunbar, 1803. ME 19:132

"War has been avoided from a due sense of the miseries, and the demoralization it produces, and of the superior blessings of a state of peace and friendship with all mankind." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Queen Anne's Country Republicans, 1809. ME 16:363

"A sincere affection between... two peoples is the broadest basis on which their peace can be built." --Thomas Jefferson to Comte de Vergennes, 1785. Papers 8:656

 

 Peace and Domestic Tranquility

"Peace and the prosperity so visibly flowing from it have but strengthened our attachment to it and the blessings it brings, and we do not despair of being always a peaceable nation." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis, 1803.

"Our desire [is] to pursue ourselves the path of peace as the only one leading surely to prosperity, and our wish [is] to preserve the morals of our citizens from being vitiated by courses of lawless plunder and murder." --Thomas Jefferson to George Hammond, 1793. ME 9:91

"Peace is our most important interest, and a recovery from debt." --Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 1801. ME 10:287

"Wars and contentions indeed fill the pages of history with more matter. But more blest is that nation whose silent course of happiness furnishes nothing for history to say. This is what I ambition for my own country." --Thomas Jefferson to Comte Diodati, 1807. ME 11:181

"We love and we value peace; we know its blessings from experience. We abhor the follies of war, and are not untried in its distresses and calamities. Unmeddling with the affairs of other nations, we had hoped that our distance and our dispositions would have left us free, in the example and indulgence of peace with all the world." --Thomas Jefferson to Carmichael and Short, 1793. ME 9:159

"How much better is it for neighbors to help than to hurt one another; how much happier must it make them. If [nations] will cease to make war on one another, if [they] will live in friendship with all mankind, [they] can employ all [their] time in providing food and clothing for [themselves] and [their people]. [Their] men will not be destroyed in war, [their] women and children will lie down to sleep in their [homes] without fear of being surprised by their enemies and killed or carried away. [Their] numbers will be increased instead of diminished and [they] will live in plenty and in quiet." --Thomas Jefferson: Address to Mandar Nation, 1806. (*) ME 16:414

"The desire to preserve our country from the calamities and ravages of war by cultivating a disposition and pursuing a conduct conciliatory and friendly to all nations has been sincerely entertained and faithfully followed [during my administration of public affairs]. It was dictated by the principles of humanity, the precepts of the gospel and the general wish of our country." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Address, 1807.

"I hope we shall prove how much happier for man the Quaker policy is, and that the life of the feeder is better than that of the fighter." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1822.

"Always a friend to peace, and believing it to promote eminently the happiness and prosperity of nations, I am ever unwilling that it should be disturbed, until greater and more important interests call for an appeal to force. Whenever that shall take place, I feel a perfect confidence that the energy and enterprise displayed by my fellow citizens in the pursuits of peace will be equally eminent in those of war." --Thomas Jefferson to John Shee, 1807. ME 11:140

 

 Avoiding War

"[Many] years of peace and the prosperity so visibly flowing from it have but strengthened our attachment to it and the blessings it brings, and we do not despair of being always a peaceable nation. We think that peaceable means may be devised of keeping nations in the path of justice towards us by making justice their interest and injuries to react on themselves." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis, Jul 12, 1803. (*) ME 10:405

"I do not believe war the most certain means of enforcing principles. Those peaceable coercions which are in the power of every nation, if undertaken in concert and in time of peace, are more likely to produce the desired effect." --Thomas Jefferson to Robert Livingston, 1801.

"We have obtained by a peaceable appeal to justice, in four months, what we should not have obtained under seven years of war, the loss of one hundred thousand lives, an hundred millions of additional debt, many hundred millions worth of produce and property lost for want of market, or in seeking it, and that demoralization which war superinduces on the human mind." --Thomas Jefferson to Hugh Williamson, 1803. ME 10:386

"War is not the best engine for us to resort to; nature has given us one in our commerce, which, if properly managed will be a better instrument for obliging the interested nations of Europe to treat us with justice... Our object should now be to... endeavor so to form our commercial regulations as that justice from other nations shall be their mechanical result." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Pinckney, 1797. ME 9:389

"To cherish and maintain the rights and liberties of our citizens and to ward from them the burthens, the miseries and the crimes of war, by a just and friendly conduct towards all nations [are] among the most obvious and important duties of those to whom the management of their public interests have been confided." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to John Thomas, et al., 1807. ME 16:290

 

Resisting War Fever

"A world in arms and trampling on all those moral principles which have heretofore been deemed sacred in the intercourse between nations, could not suffer us to remain insensible of all agitation. During such a course of lawless violence, it was certainly wise to withdraw ourselves from all intercourse with the belligerent nations, to avoid its pernicious effects on manners and morals and the dangers it threatens to free governments, and to cultivate our own resources until our natural and progressive growth should leave us nothing to fear from foreign enterprise." --Thomas Jefferson to Messrs. Bloodgood and Hammond, 1809. ME 12:317

"The maxim... "slow and sure," is not less a good one in agriculture than in politics. I sincerely wish it may extricate us from the event of a war, if this can be done saving our faith and our rights." --Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1794. ME 9:287

"My affections were first for my own country, and then, generally, for all mankind; and nothing but minds placing themselves above the passions, in the functionaries of this country, could have preserved us from the war to which... provocations have been constantly urging us." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1811. ME 12:439

"If ever I was gratified with the possession of power, and of the confidence of those who had entrusted me with it, it was on that occasion when I was enabled to use both for the prevention of war, towards which the torrent of passion here was directed almost irresistibly, and when not another person in the United States, less supported by authority and favor, could have resisted it." --Thomas Jefferson to James Maury, 1812. ME 13:148

"We had relied with great security on that provision, which requires two-thirds of the Legislature to declare war. But this is completely eluded by a majority's taking measures as will be sure to produce war." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1798. ME 10:10

 

 A State of Neutrality

"Reason and usage have established that when two nations go to war, those who choose to live in peace retain their natural right to pursue their agriculture, manufactures, and other ordinary vocations, to carry the produce of their industry for exchange to all nations, belligerent or neutral, as usual, to go and come freely without injury or molestation, and in short, that the war among others shall be, for them, as if it did not exist. One restriction on their natural rights has been submitted to by nations at peace, that is to say, that of not furnishing to either party implements merely of war for the annoyance of the other, nor anything whatever to a place blockaded by its enemy." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Pinckney, 1793. ME 9:221

"War between two nations cannot diminish the rights of the rest of the world remaining at peace. The doctrine that the rights of nations remaining quietly in the exercise of moral and social duties, are to give way to the convenience of those who prefer plundering and murdering one another, is a monstrous doctrine, and ought to yield to the more rational law, that "the wrong which two nations endeavor to inflict on each other must not infringe on the rights or conveniences of those remaining at peace." --Thomas Jefferson to Robert R. Livingston, 1801.

"We ask for peace and justice from all nations; and we will remain uprightly neutral in fact." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1806. ME 11:111

"A declaration of neutrality... was opposed on these grounds: 1. That a declaration of neutrality was a declaration there should be no war, to which the Executive was not competent. 2. That it would be better to hold back the declaration of neutrality, as a thing worth something to the powers at war, that they would bid for it, and we might reasonably ask a price, the broadest privileges of neutral nations." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1793. ME 9:138

"We have produced proofs, from the most enlightened and approved writers on the subject, that a neutral nation must, in all things relating to the war, observe an exact impartiality towards the parties; that favors to one to the prejudice of the other, would import a fraudulent neutrality, of which no nation would be the dupe; that no succor should be given to either, unless stipulated by treaty, in men, arms, or anything else directly serving for war; that the right of raising troops being one of the rights of sovereignty, and consequently appertaining exclusively to the nation itself, no foreign power or person can levy men within its territory without its consent; and he who does may be rightfully and severely punished; that if the United States have a right to refuse the permission to arm vessels and raise men within their ports and territories, they are bound by the laws of neutrality to exercise that right, and to prohibit such armaments and enlistments." --Thomas Jefferson to Gouverneur Morris, 1793. ME 9:185

"No nation has strove more than we have done to merit the peace of all by the most rigorous impartiality to all." --Thomas Jefferson to Enoch Edwards, 1793. ME 9:277

"If any nation whatever has a right to shut up to our produce all the ports of the earth except her own and those of her friends, she may shut up these also, and so confine us within our own limits. No nation can subscribe to such pretensions; no nation can agree, at the mere will or interest of another, to have its peaceable industry suspended and its citizens reduced to idleness and want. The loss of our produce destined for foreign markets, or that loss which would result from an arbitrary restraint of our markets, is a tax too serious for us to acquiesce in. It is not enough for a nation to say, we and our friends will buy your produce. We have a right to answer, that it suits us better to sell to their enemies as well as their friends... We have a right to judge for ourselves what market best suits us, and they have none to forbid to us the enjoyment of the necessaries and comforts which we may obtain from any other independent country." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Pinckney, 1793. ME 9:223

"My principle has ever been that war should not suspend either exports or imports." --Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 1813. ME 13:258

"We believe the practice of seizing what is called contraband of war, is an abusive practice, not founded in natural right... And what is contraband, by the law of nature? Either everything which may aid or comfort an enemy, or nothing. Either all commerce which would accommodate him is unlawful, or none is. The difference between articles of one or another description, is a difference in degree only. No line between them can be drawn. Either all intercourse must cease between neutrals and belligerents, or all be permitted. Can the world hesitate to say which shall be the rule? Shall two nations turning tigers, break up in one instant the peaceable relations of the whole world? Reason and nature clearly pronounce that the neutral is to go on in the enjoyment of all its rights, that its commerce remains free, not subject to the jurisdiction of another, nor consequently its vessels to search, or to enquiries whether their contents are the property of an enemy, or are of those which have been called contraband of war." --Thomas Jefferson to Robert R. Livingston, 1801.

"Undertaking to raise, organize and commission an army... independent of that of the government, the object of which is to go and possess themselves of lands which have never yet been granted by any authority which the government admits to be legal, and with an avowed design to hold them by force against any power, foreign or domestic,... will inevitably commit our whole nation in war with the Indian nations, and perhaps others. It cannot be permitted that all the inhabitants of the United States shall be involved in the calamities of war and the blood of thousands of them be poured out, merely that a few adventurers may possess themselves of lands; nor can a well-ordered government tolerate such an assumption of its sovereignty by unauthorized individuals." --Thomas Jefferson to the Attorney of the District of Kentucky, 1791. ME 8:191

 

 Peace with Honor

"Peace is undoubtedly... the first object of our nation. Interest and honor are also national considerations." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1797.

"We are for a peaceable accommodation with all... nations if it can be effected honorably." --Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 1806. ME 11:95

"We wish to do what is agreeable to [others], if we find we can do it with prudence." --Thomas Jefferson to the Choctaw Nation, 1805. ME 19:146

"I wish for peace if it can be preserved salve fide et honore [saving faith and honor.]" --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1794.

"Peace is our passion, and the wrongs might drive us from it. We prefer trying ever other just principles, right and safety, before we would recur to war." --Thomas Jefferson to John Sinclair, 1803. ME 10:397

"The war [of 1812] has done us... this good... of assuring the world, that although attached to peace from a sense of its blessings, we will meet war when it is made necessary." --Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1817. ME 15:116

"We are alarmed... with the apprehensions of war, and sincerely anxious that it may be avoided; but not at the expense either of our faith or honor. [If] the latter has been too much wounded,... [the general opinion is] to require reparation, and to seek it even in war if that be necessary. As to myself, I love peace, and I am anxious that we should give the world still another useful lesson by showing to them other modes of punishing injuries than by war, which is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer. I love, therefore, [the] proposition of cutting off all communication with the nation which has conducted itself so atrociously. This, [some] will say, may bring on war. If it does, we will meet it like men; but it may not bring on war, and then the experiment will have been a happy one." --Thomas Jefferson to Tench Coxe, May 1, 1794. (*) ME 9:285

"To demand satisfaction beyond what is adequate is wrong." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on Captured English Vessel, 1793.

 

 Preventing Acts of War

"We have already given... one effectual check to the dog of war, by transferring the power of letting him loose from the Executive to the Legislative body, from those who are to spend to those who are to pay." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:461, Papers 15:397

"All observations are unnecessary on the value of peace with other nations. It would be wise however, by timely provisions, to guard against those acts of our own citizens which might tend to disturb it and to put ourselves in a condition to give satisfaction to foreign nations which we may sometimes have occasion to require from them. I particularly recommend... the means of preventing those aggressions by our citizens on the territory of other nations and other infractions of the law of nations which, furnishing just subject of complaint, might endanger our peace with them." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft for President Washington's Message, 1792.

"In the course of [a] conflict [elsewhere], let it be our endeavor, as it is our interest and desire, to cultivate the friendship of the belligerent nations by every act of justice and of incessant kindness; to receive their armed vessels with hospitality from the distresses of the sea, but to administer the means of annoyance to none; to establish in our harbors such a police as may maintain law and order; to restrain our citizens from embarking individually in a war in which their country takes no part; to punish severely those persons, citizen or alien, who shall usurp the cover of our flag for vessels not entitled to it, infecting thereby with suspicion those of real Americans and committing us into controversies for the redress of wrongs not our own; to exact from every nation the observance toward our vessels and citizens of those principles and practices which all civilized people acknowledge; to merit the character of a just nation and maintain that of an independent one, preferring every consequence to insult and habitual wrong." --Thomas Jefferson: 3rd Annual Message, 1803. ME 3:358

"No citizen should be free to commit his country to war." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1793.

"That individuals should undertake to wage private war, independently of the authority of their country, cannot be permitted in a well-ordered society. Its tendency to produce aggression on the laws and rights of other nations, and to endanger the peace of our own is so obvious, that I doubt not [Congress] will adopt measures for restraining it effectually in future." --Thomas Jefferson: 4th Annual Message, 1804. ME 3:367

"The criminal attempts of private individuals to decide for their country the question of peace or war, by commencing active and unauthorized hostilities, should be promptly and efficaciously suppressed." --Thomas Jefferson: 6th Annual Message, 1806. ME 3:416

 Policies that Assure Peace

"Whatever enables us to go to war secures our peace." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1790.

"Although our prospect is peace, our policy and purpose are to provide for defense by all those means to which our resources are competent." --Thomas Jefferson to James Bowdoin, 1806. ME 11:121

"The power of making war often prevents it, and in our case would give efficacy to our desire of peace." --Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1788. ME 7:224

"If we wish our commerce to be free and uninsulted, we must let [other] nations see that we have an energy which at present they disbelieve. The low opinion they entertain of our powers cannot fail to involve us soon in a naval war." --Thomas Jefferson to John Page, 1785. Papers 8:419

"[Even though there may be] a justifiable cause of war... I should hope that war would not be [our] choice. I think it will furnish us a happy opportunity of setting another example to the world by showing that nations may be brought to justice by appeals to their interests as well as by appeals to arms. I should hope that Congress, instead of a denunciation of war, would instantly exclude from our ports all the manufacture, produce, vessels and subjects of the nations committing aggression during the continuance of the aggression and till full satisfaction made for it. This would work well in many ways, safely in all, and introduce between nations another umpire than arms. It would relieve us too from the risks and the horrors of cutting throats." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, Mar 24, 1793. (*)

 

 The Uses of Embargo

"[When] the alternative [is] between [embargo] and war... [embargo may be] the last card we have to play short of war." --Thomas Jefferson to Levi Lincoln, 1808. (*)

"[There is] still one other ground to which we can retire before we resort to war; [we can say] to the belligerents, rather than go to war, we will retire from the brokerage of other nations, and confine ourselves to the carriage and exchange of our own productions; but we will vindicate that in all its rights--if you touch it, it is war." --Thomas Jefferson to William A. Burwell, 1810. ME 12:364

"We live in an age of affliction, to which the history of nations presents no parallel. We have for years been looking on Europe covered with blood and violence, and seen rapine spreading itself over the ocean. On this element it has reached us, and at length in so serious a degree, that the Legislature of the nation has thought it necessary to withdraw our citizens and property from it, either to avoid or to prepare for engaging in the general contest." --Thomas Jefferson to Capt. M'Gregor, 1808. ME 12:151

"The measures respecting our intercourse with foreign nations were the result... of a choice between two evils, either to call and keep at home our seamen and property, or suffer them to be taken under the edicts of the belligerent powers. How a difference of opinion could arise between these alternatives is still difficult to explain on any acknowledged ground." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Alleghany County Citizens, 1809. ME 16:357

"To have submitted our rightful commerce to prohibitions and tributary exactions from others, would have been to surrender our independence. To resist them by arms was war, without consulting the state of things or the choice of the nation. The alternative preferred by the legislature of suspending a commerce placed under such unexampled difficulties, besides saving to our citizens their property, and our mariners to their country, has the peculiar advantage of giving time to the belligerent nations to revise a conduct as contrary to their interests as it is to our rights." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Inhabitants of Boston, et al., 1808. ME 16:313

"After exhausting the cup of forbearance and conciliation to its dregs, we found it necessary, on behalf of... commerce, to take time to call it home into a state of safety, to put the towns and harbors which carry it on into a condition of defence, and to make further preparation for enforcing the redress of its wrongs, and restoring it to its rightful freedom." --Thomas Jefferson to William Eustis, 1809.

"The French Emperor... does not wish us to go to war with England, knowing we have no ships to carry on that war. To submit to pay to England the tribute on our commerce which she demands by her orders of council, would be to aid her in the war against him, and would give him just ground to declare war with us. He concludes, therefore, as every rational man must, that the embargo, the only remaining alternative, was a wise measure." --Thomas Jefferson to Robert R. Livingston, 1808. ME 12:170

"If... on leaving our harbors we are certainly to lose them, is it not better, as to vessels, cargoes, and seamen, to keep them at home? This is submitted to the wisdom of Congress, who alone are competent to provide a remedy." --Thomas Jefferson to John Mason, 1807[?]. ME 11:402

"The embargo keeping at home our vessels, cargoes and seamen, saves us the necessity of making their capture the cause of immediate war." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1808. ME 11:414

"Could the alternative of war or the embargo have been presented to the whole nation, as it occurred to their representatives, there could have been but the one opinion that it was better to take the chance of one year by the embargo, within which the orders and decrees producing it may be repealed, or peace take place in Europe, which may secure peace to us. How long the continuance of the embargo may be preferable to war, is a question we shall have to meet, if the decrees and orders and war continue." --Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Smith, 1808. ME 12:61

"An embargo had, by the course of events, become the only peaceable card we had to play. Should neither peace, nor a revocation of the decrees and orders in Europe take place, the day cannot be distant when that will cease to be preferable to open hostility." --Thomas Jefferson to James Bowdoin, 1808. ME 12:69

 

 Advantages of Embargo

"The measure of a temporary suspension of commerce was adopted to cover us from greater evils... It has given time to prepare for defence, and has shown to the aggressors of Europe that evil, as well as good actions, recoil on the doers." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Young Republicans of Pittsburgh, 1808. ME 16:324

"A suspension of our navigation for a time was equally necessary to avoid contest, or enter it with advantage. This measure will, indeed, produce some temporary inconvenience; but promises lasting good by promoting among ourselves the establishment of manufactures hitherto sought abroad, at the risk of collisions no longer regulated by the laws of reason or morality." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Philadelphia Democratic Republicans, 1808. ME 16:304

"The trying measure of embargo... has saved our seamen and our property, has given us time to prepare for vindicating our honor and preserving our national independence, and has excited the spirit of manufacturing for ourselves those things which, though we raised the raw material, we have hitherto sought from other countries at the risk of war and rapine." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Niagara County Republicans, 1809. ME 16:344

"To the advantages derived from the choice which was made will be added the improvements and discoveries made and making in the arts, and the establishments in domestic manufacture, the effects whereof will be permanent and diffused through our wide-extended continent." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Alleghany County Citizens, 1809. ME 16:357

"In return for the privations by the [embargo] measure, and which our fellow citizens in general have borne with patriotism, it has had the important effects of saving our mariners and our vast mercantile property, as well as of affording time for prosecuting the defensive and provisional measures called for by the occasion. It has demonstrated to foreign nations the moderation and firmness which govern our councils, and to our citizens the necessity of uniting in support of the laws and the rights of their country, and has thus long frustrated those usurpations and spoilations which, if resisted, involve war; if submitted to, sacrificed a vital principle of our national independence." --Thomas Jefferson: 8th Annual Message, 1808. ME 3:477

 Mankind's Disposition Toward War

"This pugnacious humor of mankind seems to be the law of his nature, one of the obstacles to too great multiplication provided in the mechanism of the Universe. The cocks of the henyard kill one another up; boars, bulls, rams do the same; and the horse in his wild state kills all the young males until worn down with age and war, some vigorous youth kills him and takes to himself the harem of females. I hope we shall prove how much happier for man the Quaker policy is, and that the life of the feeder is better than that of the fighter; and it is some consolation that the desolation of these maniacs of one part of the earth is the means of improving it in other parts. Let the latter be our office, and let us milk the cow while the [one despot] holds her by the horns and the [other] by the tail." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1822. (*) ME 15:372

"The destructive passions seem to have been implanted in man, as one of the obstacles to his too great multiplication." --Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 1814. ME 18:183

"A war between [two despots] is like the battle of the kite and snake. Whichever destroys the other leaves a destroyer the less for the world." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1822. ME 15:372

"The animosities of sovereigns are temporary and may be allayed, but those which seize the whole body of a people, and of a people, too, who dictate their own measures, produce calamities of long duration." --Thomas Jefferson to C. W. F. Dumas, 1786.

"For us to attempt by war to reform all Europe, and bring them back to principles of morality and a respect for the equal rights of nations, would show us to be only maniacs of another character." --Thomas Jefferson to William Wirt, 1811. ME 13:56

"I hope it is practicable, by improving the mind and morals of society, to lessen the disposition to war; but of its abolition I despair." --Thomas Jefferson to Noah Worcester, 1817. ME 18:298

"There will be war enough to ensure us great prices for wheat for years to come, and if we are wise we shall become wealthy." --Thomas Jefferson to George Gilmer, 1790. ME 8:63

 

 Opposed to Conquest

"If there be one principle more deeply rooted than any other in the mind of every American it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest." --Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 1791.

"We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest." --Thomas Jefferson: Declaration on Taking Up Arms, 1775. Papers 1:203

"Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government." --Thomas Jefferson: Instructions to William Carmichael, 1790.

"The sound principles of national integrity... forbade us to take what was a neighbor's merely because it suited us and especially from a neighbor under circumstances of peculiar affliction." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1813. ME 19:197

 

 War's False Arithmetic

"Nations of eternal war [expend] all their energies... in the destruction of the labor, property, and lives of their people." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1823. (*)

"I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1797.

"Never was so much false arithmetic employed on any subject as that which has been employed to persuade nations that it is their interest to go to war. Were the money which it has cost to gain, at the close of a long war, a little town or a little territory, the right to cut wood here or to catch fish there, expended in improving what they already possess, in making roads, opening rivers, building ports, improving the arts and finding employment for their idle poor, it would render them much stronger, much wealthier and happier. This I hope will be our wisdom." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XXII, 1782. ME 2:240

"The most successful war seldom pays for its losses." --Thomas Jefferson to Edmund Randolph, 1785. ME 5:140, Papers 8:538

"One would think it not so difficult to discover that the improvement of the country we possess is the surest means of increasing our wealth and power. This, too, promotes the happiness of mankind, while the others destroy it and are always uncertain of their object." --Thomas Jefferson to James Currie, 1785. ME 19:13, Papers 8:559

"The evils which of necessity encompass the life of man are sufficiently numerous. Why should we add to them by voluntarily distressing and destroying one another? Peace, brothers, is better than war. In a long and bloody war, we lose many friends and gain nothing. Let us then live in peace and friendship together, doing to each other all the good we can." --Thomas Jefferson: Address to Indian Nations, 1802. ME 16:390

"Although I dare not promise myself that [peace] can be perpetually maintained, yet if, by the inculcations of reason or religion, the perversities of our nature can be so far corrected as sometimes to prevent the necessity, either supposed or real, of an appeal to the blinder scourges of war, murder, and devastation, the benevolent endeavors of the friends of peace will not be entirely without remuneration." --Thomas Jefferson to Noah Worcester, 1817. ME 18:299

The simple objective for a war artist is to record a particular war. You could ask why film and photography is not enough. I think that due to the very nature of painting or drawing, one can exaggerate or highlight poignant themes, atmospheres, moods, and it gives a completely different slant. With mass media, you see so much, so many evocative photographs. We're inundated with news footage and camera work. So you see these remarkable photographs, and then we've forgotten them. But with a painting you can sit in a gallery, or open a book, and you can consider, and you can ponder what is going on.

Any preconceptions I had before I went to Afghanistan were based entirely on what I had seen in the newspapers and on television. But the reality was completely different. I arrived at Camp Bastion and then I was at Camp Shorabak, the main Afghan base. I had no idea what it took to keep 100,000 troops going, the vast infrastructure. Twenty-four hours a day there were convoys of hundreds of lorries bringing in concrete for building and the food that is required to feed all these troops.
And then there is the stunning beauty of the landscape. It's incredible. When you see the local people in their traditional garments, there is only one word to describe it – biblical. It's 2,000 years ago. So there is this weird contrast of stunning beautiful landscapes, and war, with all the arms and army. Constantly you are pulled between the two.

I thought it was important not to go with too many preconceived ideas. The way I work is very rapid-fire, quick sketches and drawings. There was so much activity going on that was the best way. I had to make quick studies and drawings, encompassing all I could see.

I was embedded with the 2 Yorks (Green Howards) whose role was to lead mentoring and liaison training. I thought they might be a bit sceptical but they really supported the idea, they thought it was wonderful that someone was there to record it.
On the little patrol bases at night, when there is very little to do, I would paint a portrait of someone, watched by all the soldiers. They always wanted to know if they were in the picture, so I think it was appreciated.

I got camp life, and portraits. I went out on foot patrol. That was the first time I've ever walked and drawn and watched my step for IEDs all at the same time – a quick learning curve. On one occasion, we ended up in a firefight. I was not in the thick of it, but my role was to make drawings. So I witnessed a three-hour skirmish. Two vehicles hit IEDs but fortunately there were no bad injuries. Though one person had to be medevaced and we didn't initially know how he was and I felt physically sick. On another occasion, at the district centre at Musa Qala, I was up on the rooftop and there was the most stunning view of the wadi and the mountains. I painted the landscape but it was so strange painting this incredible view and watching an amazing sunset with the sound of blasts and gunfire going off in the background.

I hope my sketches and paintings convey the experience of what it is like to be on the frontline, the elements of fear and energy, and equally the camaraderie and the determination of the troops. Because for every setback, for every friend injured, that makes them more determined to succeed.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the war, my objective was to study the British army in the theatre of war. I have so much respect for these men and women. They should be given full support for what they do.

         

             

A Scottish soldier, Sergeant David Stenhouse, has written a book of war poems from the front line in Afghanistan. In it he has laid bare the horror of life in Helmand in a series of heart-felt verses. Stenhouse wrote about carnage caused by deadly roadside explosives, suicide bombers and the constant threat of attack soldiers face.

Sergeant Stenhouse, from Glenrothes, Fife, Scotland, was inspired to start writing when Army top brass were impressed by notes he jotted on a pad during work breaks.  He explains that he wrote about wha he saw going on around him and what he felt  "When someone dies over there, we all feel it. We attend vigils and hear details about this young person's life. It's so sad. Writing about it has helped me deal with it and the other soldiers seem to like my poems, which means a lot to me."

Mountains and river in Helmand Province, Afghanistan

Stand and Fight

Twenty-two brave men

lost their lives within the month of July,

yet our blood-stained flag

still blows in the desert sky.

Is it time we were leaving

the Afghanistan plains,

before more of our men

are so cruelly slain?

But no we are British,

and we will stand and fight,

hunting down the

Insurgent day and night.

Suicide Bomber

To him this is a Holy War,

and you the infidel must pay,

if you don’t recognise and eliminate him,

he’s going to blow you away.

Hidden Killer

The chaos and confusion

that occurs straight after the blast,

your comrades will have to act quickly;

they will have to react fast.

The smell of burnt flesh and the

horrific pain at first sight,

you will have to hang onto your life brave soldier,

now begins the fight.

Combat Logistic Patrol

You’ve got one hand on the wheel,

the other close to your gun,

driving in the heat and dust,

blinded by the sun.”

In his own description: "Bob Thurber is an old, unschooled writer who wrote every day for twenty years before trying to publish."  The recipient of three dozen awards over the last decade, he has been called " A maestro of micro-fiction," and The Sam Peckinpah of Flash Fiction. Numerous selections of his work have been used in schools and colleges, on reading assessments, oral interpretations, and as models of compact prose. Bob Thurber is now a Contributing Editor to Linnaean Street,
and co-editor of the critically acclaimed literary site, Gargoyle: Arts and Letters on the Web.  He can be contacted at: bobthurber@yahoo.com

Thurber's "The Cricket War," is filled with lessons that ironically relate to war generally.  As you read the story you'll find it easy to draw parallels to real life conflicts that escalate into unbelievable heights.

That summer an army of crickets started a war with my father. They picked a fight the minute they invaded our cellar. Dad didn't care for bugs much more than Mamma, but he could tolerate a few spiders and assorted creepy crawlers living in the basement. Every farm house had them. A part of rustic living, and something you needed to put up with if you wanted the simple life.

He told Mamma: Now that were living out here, you cant be jerking your head and swallowing your gum over what's plain natural, Ellen. But she was a city girl through and through and had no ears when it came to defending vermin. She said a cricket was just a noisy cockroach, just a dumb horny bug that wouldn't shut up. She said in the city there were blocks of buildings overrun with cockroaches with no way for people to get rid of them. No sir, no way could she sleep with all that chirping going on; then to prove her point she wouldn't go to bed. She drank coffee and smoked my fathers cigarettes and she paced between the couch and the TV. Next morning she threatened to pack up and leave, so Dad drove to the hardware store and hurried back. He squirted poison from a jug with a spray nozzle. He sprayed the basement and all around the foundation of the house. When he was finished he told us that was the end of it.

But what he should have said was: This is the beginning, The beginning of our war, the beginning of our destruction. I often think back to that summer and try to imagine him delivering a speech with words like that, because for the next fourteen days mamma kept finding dead crickets in the clean laundry. Shed shake out a towel or a sheet and a dead black cricket would roll across the linoleum. Sometimes the cat would corner one, and swat it around like he was playing hockey, then carry it away in his mouth. Dad said swallowing a few dead crickets wouldn't hurt as long as the cat didn't eat too many. Each time Mamma complained he told her it was only natural that we'd be finding a couple of dead ones for a while.

Soon live crickets started showing up in the kitchen and bathroom. Mamma freaked because she thought they were the dead crickets come back to haunt, but Dad said these was definitely a new batch, probably coming up on the pipes. He fetched his jug of poison and sprayed beneath the sink and behind the toilet and all along the baseboard until the whole house smelled of poison, and then he sprayed the cellar again, and then he went outside and sprayed all around the foundation leaving a foot-wide moat of poison. Stop them son of a bitches right in their tracks, he told us.

For a couple of weeks we went back to finding dead crickets in the laundry. Dad told us to keep a sharp look out. He suggested that we'd all be better off to hide as many as we could from mamma. I fed a few dozen to the cat who I didn't like because he scratched and bit for no reason. I hoped the poison might kill him so we could get a puppy. Once in a while we found a dead cricket in the bathroom or beneath the kitchen sink. We didn't know if these were fresh dead or old dead the cat had played with and then abandoned. Dad cracked a few in half to show us that they were fresh. Then he used the rest of the poison to give the house another dose. A couple of weeks later, when both live and dead crickets kept turning up, he emptied the cellar of junk. He borrowed Uncle Burt's pickup and hauled a load to the dump. Then he burned a lot of bundled newspapers and magazines which he said the crickets had turned into nests.

He stood over that fire with a rake in one hand and a garden hose in the other. He wouldn't leave it even when Mamma sent me out to fetch him for supper. He wouldn't leave the fire, and she wouldn't put supper on the table. Both my brothers were crying. Finally she went out and got him herself. And while we ate, the wind lifted some embers onto the wood pile. The only gasoline was in the lawn mowers fuel tank but that was enough to create an explosion big enough to reach the house. Once the roof caught, there wasn't much anyone could do.

  After the fire trucks left I made the mistake of volunteering to stay behind while Mamma took the others to Aunt Gail's. I helped Dad and Uncle Burt and two men I'd never seen before carry things out of the house and stack them by the road. In the morning we'd come back in Burt's truck and haul everything away. We worked into the night and we didn't talk much, hardly a word about anything that mattered, and Dad didn't offer any plan that he might have for us now. Uncle Burt passed a bottle around, but I shook my head when it came to me. I kicked and picked through the mess, dumb struck at how little there was to salvage, while all around the roar of crickets magnified our silence.

Winslow Homer: Duryea's Zouaves, 5th New York regiment, American Civil War

Zouave was a title originally given to infantry regiments in the French Army, most often those men serving in French North Africa between 1831 and 1962.  However, the name was also adopted during the 19th century by units in other armies, especially volunteer regiments raised for service in the American Civil War, Spanish Carlist War and Polish upriisings against the Russian Empire.  Zouave units were created for the Turkish Imperial Guard, The Brazilian Triple Alliance War against Paraguay, and one of the most famous groups, the Papal Zouaves who are still in service as a group. The characteristic zouave uniform included short open fronted jackets, baggy trousers and often sashes and oriental headgear.

The look of the Zouave has been of interest to artists since they first appeared.  Some of the world's leading artists have created portraits of Zouaves. 

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zouave.

http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/zouaves.htm.

Paintings of Zouaves

K. Ferguson: Toujours Pret (Always Ready): Hawkins Zouaves, Battle of Antietam

Vincent Van Gogh: Lieutenant of the Zouaves

Vincent Van Gogh: Marksman

Vincent Van Gogh: Portrait of Milliet, Second Lieutanant of the Zouaves

Amedeo Modigliani: Zouave

Mentana
Victor Hugo

I.

Young soldiers of the noble Latin blood,
How many are ye--Boys? Four thousand odd.
How many are there dead? Six hundred: count!
Their limbs lie strewn about the fatal mount,
Blackened and torn, eyes gummed with blood, hearts rolled
Out from their ribs, to give the wolves of the wold
A red feast; nothing of them left but these
Pierced relics, underneath the olive trees,
Show where the gin was sprung--the scoundrel-trap
Which brought those hero-lads their foul mishap.
See how they fell in swathes--like barley-ears!
Their crime? to claim Rome and her glories theirs;
To fight for Right and Honor;--foolish names!
Come--Mothers of the soil! Italian dames!
Turn the dead over!--try your battle luck!
(Bearded or smooth, to her that gave him suck
The man is always child)--Stay, here's a brow
Split by the Zouaves' bullets! This one, now,
With the bright curly hair soaked so in blood,
Was yours, ma donna!--sweet and fair and good.

The spirit sat upon his fearless face
Before they murdered it, in all the grace
Of manhood's dawn. Sisters, here's yours! his lips,
Over whose bloom the bloody death-foam slips,
Lisped house-songs after you, and said your name
In loving prattle once. That hand, the same
Which lies so cold over the eyelids shut,
Was once a small pink baby-fist, and wet
With milk beads from thy yearning breasts.

Take thou
Thine eldest,--thou, thy youngest born. Oh, flow
Of tears never to cease! Oh, Hope quite gone,
Dead like the dead!--Yet could they live alone--
Without their Tiber and their Rome? and be
Young and Italian--and not also free?
They longed to see the ancient eagle try
His lordly pinions in a modern sky.
They bore--each on himself--the insults laid
On the dear foster-land: of naught afraid,
Save of not finding foes enough to dare
For Italy. Ah; gallant, free, and rare
Young martyrs of a sacred cause,--Adieu!
No more of life--no more of love--for you!
No sweet long-straying in the star-lit glades
At Ave-Mary, with the Italian maids;
No welcome home!

II.

This Garibaldi now, the Italian boys
Go mad to hear him--take to dying--take
To passion for "the pure and high";--God's sake!
It's monstrous, horrible! One sees quite clear
Society--our charge--must shake with fear,
And shriek for help, and call on us to act
When there's a hero, taken in the fact.
If Light shines in the dark, there's guilt in that!
What's viler than a lantern to a bat?

III.

Your Garibaldi missed the mark! You see
The end of life's to cheat, and not to be
Cheated: The knave is nobler than the fool!
Get all you can and keep it! Life's a pool,
The best luck wins; if Virtue starves in rags,
I laugh at Virtue; here's my money-bags!
Here's righteous metal! We have kings, I say,
To keep cash going, and the game at play;
There's why a king wants money--he'd be missed
Without a fertilizing civil list.
Do but try
The question with a steady moral eye!
The colonel strives to be a brigadier,
The marshal, constable. Call the game fair,
And pay your winners! Show the trump, I say!
A renegade's a rascal--till the day
They make him Pasha: is he rascal then?
What with these sequins? Bah! you speak to Men,
And Men want money--power--luck--life's joy--
Those take who can: we could, and fobbed Savoy;
For those who live content with honest state,
They're public pests; knock we 'em on the pate!
They set a vile example! Quick--arrest
That Fool, who ruled and failed to line his nest.
Just hit a bell, you'll see the clapper shake--
Meddle with Priests, you'll find the barrack wake--
Ah! Princes know the People's a tight boot,
March 'em sometimes to be shot and to shoot,
Then they'll wear easier. So let them preach
The righteousness of howitzers; and teach
At the fag end of prayer: "Now, slit their throats!
My holy Zouaves! my good yellow-coats!"
We like to see the Holy Father send
Powder and steel and lead without an end,
To feed Death fat; and broken battles mend.
So they!

IV.

But thou, our Hero, baffled, foiled,
The Glorious Chief who vainly bled and toiled.
The trust of all the Peoples--Freedom's Knight!
The Paladin unstained--the Sword of Right!
What wilt thou do, whose land finds thee but jails!
The banished claim the banished! deign to cheer
The refuge of the homeless--enter here,
And light upon our households dark will fall
Even as thou enterest. Oh, Brother, all,
Each one of us--hurt with thy sorrows' proof,
Will make a country for thee of his roof.
Come, sit with those who live as exiles learn:
Come! Thou whom kings could conquer but not yet turn.
We'll talk of "Palermo"[2]--"the Thousand" true,
Will tell the tears of blood of France to you;
Then by his own great Sea we'll read, together,
Old Homer in the quiet summer weather,
And after, thou shalt go to thy desire
While that faint star of Justice grows to fire.[3]

V.

Oh, Italy! hail your Deliverer,
Oh, Nations! almost he gave Rome to her!
Strong-arm and prophet-heart had all but come
To win the city, and to make it "Rome."
Calm, of the antique grandeur, ripe to be
Named with the noblest of her history.
He would have Romanized your Rome--controlled
Her glory, lordships, Gods, in a new mould.
Her spirits' fervor would have melted in
The hundred cities with her; made a twin
Vesuvius and the Capitol; and blended
Strong Juvenal's with the soul, tender and splendid,
Of Dante--smelted old with new alloy--
Stormed at the Titans' road full of bold joy
Whereby men storm Olympus. Italy,
Weep!--This man could have made one Rome of thee!

VI.

But the crime's wrought! Who wrought it?
Honest Man--
Priest Pius? No! Each does but what he can.
Yonder's the criminal! The warlike wight
Who hides behind the ranks of France to fight,
Greek Sinon's blood crossed thick with Judas-Jew's,
The Traitor who with smile which true men woos,
Lip mouthing pledges--hand grasping the knife--
Waylaid French Liberty, and took her life.
Kings, he is of you! fit companion! one
Whom day by day the lightning looks upon
Keen; while the sentenced man triples his guard
And trembles; for his hour approaches hard.
Ye ask me "when?" I say _soon_! Hear ye not
Yon muttering in the skies above the spot?
Mark ye no coming shadow, Kings? the shroud
Of a great storm driving the thunder-cloud?
Hark! like the thief-catcher who pulls the pin,
God's thunder asks to _speak to one within_!

VII.

And meanwhile this death-odor--this corpse-scent
Which makes the priestly incense redolent
Of rotting men, and the Te Deums stink--
Reeks through the forests--past the river's brink,
O'er wood and plain and mountain, till it fouls
Fair Paris in her pleasures; then it prowls,
A deadly stench, to Crete, to Mexico,
To Poland--wheresoe'er kings' armies go:
And Earth one Upas-tree of bitter sadness,
Opening vast blossoms of a bloody madness.
Throats cut by thousands--slain men by the ton!
Earth quite corpse-cumbered, though the half not done!
They lie, stretched out, where the blood-puddles soak,
Their black lips gaping with the last cry spoke.
"Stretched;" nay! _sown broadcast_; yes, the word is "sown."
The fallows Liberty--the harsh wind blown
Over the furrows, Fate: and these stark dead
Are grain sublime, from Death's cold fingers shed
To make the Abyss conceive: the Future bear
More noble Heroes! Swell, oh, Corpses dear!
Rot quick to the green blade of Freedom! Death!
Do thy kind will with them! They without breath,
Stripped, scattered, ragged, festering, slashed and blue,
Dangle towards God the arms French shot tore through
And wait in meekness, Death! for Him and You!

VIII.

Oh, France! oh, People! sleeping unabashed!
Liest thou like a hound when it was lashed?
Thou liest! thine own blood fouling both thy hands,
And on thy limbs the rust of iron bands,
And round thy wrists the cut where cords went deep.
Say did they numb thy soul, that thou didst sleep?
Alas! sad France is grown a cave for sleeping,
Which a worse night than Midnight holds in keeping,
Thou sleepest sottish--lost to life and fame--
While the stars stare on thee, and pale for shame.
Stir! rouse thee! Sit! if thou know'st not to rise;
Sit up, thou tortured sluggard! ope thine eyes!
Stretch thy brawn, Giant! Sleep is foul and vile!
Art fagged, art deaf, art dumb? art blind this while?
They lie who say so! Thou dost know and feel
The things they do to thee and thine. The heel
That scratched thy neck in passing--whose? Canst say?
Yes, yes, 'twas _his_, and this is his _fete-day_.
Oh, thou that wert of humankind--couched so--
A beast of burden on this dunghill! oh!
Bray to them, Mule! Oh, Bullock! bellow then!
Since they have made thee blind, grope in thy den!
Do something, Outcast One, that wast so grand!
Who knows if thou putt'st forth thy poor maimed hand,
There may be venging weapon within reach!
Feel with both hands--with both huge arms go stretch
Along the black wall of thy cellar. Nay,
There _may_ be some odd thing hidden away?
Who knows--there _may_! Those great hands might so come
In course of ghastly fumble through the gloom,
Upon a sword--a _sword_! The hands once clasp
Its hilt, must wield it with a Victor's grasp.

EDWIN ARNOLD, C.S.I.

[Footnote 1: The Battle of Mentana, so named from a village by Rome, was fought between the allied French and Papal Armies and the Volunteer Forces of Garibaldi, Nov. 3, 1867.]

[Footnote 2: Palermo was taken immediately after the Garibaldian volunteers, 1000 strong, landed at Marsala to inaugurate the rising which made Italy free.]

[Footnote 3: Both poet and his idol lived to see the French Republic for the fourth time proclaimed. When Hugo rose in the Senate, on the first occasion after his return to Paris after the expulsion of the Napoleons, and his white head was seen above that of Rouher, ex-Prime Minister of the Empire, all the house shuddered, and in a nearly unanimous voice shouted: "The judgment of God! expiation!"]

Article by Nicole Brodeur, Seattle Times, January 2008

The Iraq War came to Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart the other day in the form of a young woman.

 Army Reserve Capt. Ashleigh Fortier visited the Bellevue private school as part of its daylong Senior Seminar, which this year focused on those who come home from the war. Fortier, 36, of Tacoma, spent 14 months in Baqouba, overseeing military police and training Iraqi police officers. It changed her, and made coming home a struggle all its own. 

"Even though we're soldiers and people think we're hardened, my heart hurts," Fortier said. "And I am still trying to figure out where I fit in here."

It was a lesson not only for the students, but all of us.

Read the rest of the story.

The Century Mountain Project honors the greatness in us as human beings that has made itself evident throughout the centuries in the form of great creators, thinkers, leaders, discoverers--essentially people who stood out like mountains throughout the centuries.  This ongoing collaborative artwork between one of the greatest poets of 20th century China, Huang Xiang and  American artist, William Rock, is a celebration of the vast potential that is in each one of us.  It has no cultural, gender or race distinctions. 

After they discuss and select a subject, William Rock will paint the portrait and Huang Xiang will add his poetry, which pertains to the person portrayed, with his masterful calligraphy.  The artists share an inherent trust and experiential of humanities 'source' that allows them to create art that unites, connects and celebrates humanity. a

Selections of the collaborative work of Huang Xiang and William Rock follow.  Links to other Voices pages are given.

Buddha

Calligraphy from Huang Xiang's writings, "Reading Notes Left on a Star"

The boundless cosmos is a blank heavenly book with numerous volumes,
over thousands of years mankind has only guessed two or three words.

I feel alone among the crowds who are strangers to me.
My fleshly body creeps along in "existence", my mind is elswhere. 

Voices Pages on Buddha 

http://voiceseducation.org/content/buddha

Albert Einstein

  Calligraph is from original writing by Huang Xiang

If we already know the earth is a beautiful spot, how could
we not go and appraise the face of the whole cosmos?
Don't hesitate, go right in, here is a magically beautiful world.
Go call on the Milky Way Galaxy, go call on the solar system.
Go visit the remotest fixed star.
But also grasp a grain of dust, and discover the body of a still
confined, unfolded new world.
And also bring back a piece of a meteorite and translate the
marvelous cosmic inscriptions on it.

Voices pages on Einstein

http://voiceseducation.org/content/albert-einstein

http://voiceseducation.org/content/%E2%80%94-albert-einstein

http://voiceseducation.org/content/reflecting-words-albert-einstein

Gandhi

  Calligraph is excerpt from Huang Xiang's poem, "The Fire God"

As you unroll the layered shrouds that swaddle hearts
Strike without cease to the depth and breadth of
human souls

To shatter the bastions of superstition, the inner
courts of falsehood

To sweep aside the sundered walls of toppled faith

For those who are more against freedom than tyranny
You lift away the film that clouds their reason

Those whose trust was destroyed by others

Because of you have regained their trust
those who long ago lost all glimmer of hope

Because of you have braveley begun to show it

Voices pages on Gandhi

http://voiceseducation.org/content/mahatma-gandhi

http://voiceseducation.org/node/119

Martin Luther King

Calligraphy is an excerpt from King's "I Have a Dream" speech

I have a dream.
So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire!

Let freedom ring from the mountains of New York !
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped rockies of Colorado !
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California !
But not only that; let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia !
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee !
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi !
From every mountainside, let freedom ring !

I Have a Dream !
I Have a Dream !

Voices Pages on Martin Luther King

http://voiceseducation.org/content/martin-luther-king-jr

Abraham Lincoln

  Calligraphy is an excerpt from Human Xiang's poem, "The Fire God"

You live in immortality
You die in non-death
Because of your very name
Man doubts the things he knows
Receives the logic of things yet unknown

You're the ultimate gift of time
You're the pride of the world

Voices Pages on Lincoln

http://voiceseducation.org/content/abraham-lincoln

Pablo Neruda

Calligraphy extracted from Huang Xiang's poem, "Pablo Neruda"

This is a king of poetry

He stands alone like a star. His territory is poetry, the fertile 
and remote continent of his soul

He opens his mouth. A river with nutrient rich discharge 
gushes from his breast. The waves of his raucous glottal stops
rolled and foamed the songs of the Pacific Ocean

When the broad Niagra waterfall
rolls down
from his lips

Neruda

Voices Pages on Pablo Neruda

http://voiceseducation.org/content/pablo-neruda-chilean

http://voiceseducation.org/content/pablo-neruda-chilean-0

Source form more information on the Century Mountain Project

http://www.centurymountain.com/HuangXiang_WmRock_Paintings.html

A film by internationally renown artist / filmmaker Carolina Loyola-Garcia. Considered to be one of the greatest poets of 20th century China, Huang Xiang and American artist William Rock collaborate to create an ongoing series of painted portraits called The Century Mountain Project. The portraits depict individuals who stood out like mountains throughout the centuries. The collaboration and art of Huang Xiang and William Rock honors the potential in all of us to create a harmonious, connected humanity. This film had a celebrated premiere at The Antiga Audiencia in Tarragona, Spain, the fourth of June 2010.

9-11-02

Memoir and Presence

Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity. —Simone Weil

Basim Furat was born in Karbalaa, Iraq, in 1967 and started writing poetry when he was in primary school. His first poem was published when he was still in high school. In early 1993 he crossed the border and became a refugee in Jordan. Four years later he arrived in New Zealand. The death of his father when he was two years old, the fact his mother was left a young widow and his compulsory military service for the Iraqi army in the second Gulf War have had a large influence on his poetry. His poetry has been published all over the world, and has been translated into French, Spanish and English. His first poetry book in Arabic was published in Madrid in 1999 and the second one was published in Amman, Jordan, in 2002. He is a member of Union of Arab Writers and is the New Zealand co-ordinator for Joussour, an Australasian Arabic/English magazine.

Departure
Translated from Arabic by Abbas Al Shiekh
Edited by Mark Pirie

Friends depart
Followed by dreams
Lighting deep their paths of alienation
Their intimacy is forlorn
Their roads are fading
Their strength is failing
Their wishes taken by surprise
And commit suicide …. commit suicide …. commit suicide ….

They draw spring as a patch for them
And never return
Only to find autumn chewing into the map of the country
They seek the help of the two rivers, but destruction in its full attire
Is running in an area called home

Friends depart
Sea is swallowing their moons
Airports are archiving them in the oblivion basket
Borders are exclamation marks in their lives
But they did not crook their cross
Their memories are still at the house
Courtyard rocking their childhood

Friends depart
Friends depart

Friends d e p a r t e d

Source: BMP!!: http://nzpoetsonline.homestead.com/bf11.html.

I crossed the borders accidentally

Translated by Abbas El Sheikh
Edited by Mark Pirie

The only loser of the wars was me.
So, I hung them up reluctantly,
And went searching for myself
And destruction was whinnying in my shoulder.

The smell of splinters
Is a prolonged nausea;
I pull the repeated defeats
And line them up on the table
So that they will wound the decorations.
I hang up a long history on the window
And hang up my life on a bullet
Suspended from a far away heaven;
My fingers are remnants of ancient cities
And the seal of the dead are my steps.

Oh Sun wait for me,
To pick up my mornings from a pavement;
There is nothing on it but my body
And remnants of skulls decayed by alienation.
Depart away not,
To let me gather my splinters
From a hole in the clouds.
I distribute my years among the newspapers and journals;
My years are dried like sultanas.

Those ashes of wars suffocated my soul
And dried the oil of childhood at my door.
The door released me
Stinging my mornings,
And countries escaped between my fingers.

I crossed the borders accidentally -
My decorations are question marks,
Distances are whinnying
And their coldness kneels on our lives
Crushing our days,
And my dust is covering the walls and windows
But does not come near to my stature.

Since the stroll of the first war -
I mean the foolishness of the General -
I have entered the city
Like a dog
In whose face the houses are barking.

My mother arranges the stars, which are mixed
With her hair,
And drinks tea in which she dissolves her sadness.
Roads are streaming on my feet
And the fruits of the trees are dangling
On the horizon.

Horizon is an illusion for the eye -
Who can hold its shadow?
Our mistakes are a homeland leaning on a spear
And our dreams are growing on balconies.

Honey is fermenting on your tongue
Translated by Abbas El Sheikh Edited by Mark Pirie

I am trying to restrain my shooting stars in vain;
My neighing is flowing and you are my desired one.
It is just in vain ... deliriums!

How did you leave the doors and roads spinning around
And not take notice of the stars falling between your fingers?
At that moment I was nowhere,
But suddenly you whetted my soul.
For you I draw on the passages of estrangement from other homelands
And the heaven between my fingers is forlorn.
I cover it with mewing poems
And head to you, hearing the forests singing
And the seas stay aloof.
I see a desert moistening
And head to you, listening to silence,
Taking with me nothing but the geography of pain -
And I never arrive...

Will the rest of my life be enough
And a little of dreams?

You are my holy soil,
Your eternal morning is budding with poems.
You are the wave,
We crown your childhood with your glamour.
You are our mirror;
In your hands are the keys of wisdom,

Infinitely South

And I say: In the far away
There is something calling for remembrance
In the cities exhausted by the sea
I dump my dreams
I have souvenirs from wars
And from cities' wounds
I have the tears of reeds,
The sighs of date trees,
The revelation of oranges
The blood of myrtle 
There on the map of my childhood
I left an innocence pierced 
By the rot of the military 
The barracks stole from home
And threw me to exile

God and I are alone
There is an eternity seeking shelter in me
And forgetfulness abandons me
Leaving the smell of bombardment in the corridors of my life
And in the far away I say:
War takes me by surprise and sweeps away my happiness
All I catch is a mirage
Without a passport
The Euphrates ignites its waves for me
All things point to you
But nothing reminds me of you 
The heaven bends for you to cross
A thread of butterflies awaits at your door
Far-reaching singing of birds 
And a transparent coo touches the paper
And in the whiteness of it all there's a long revelation
And I say: in the south there is a south

The woman of forty ignores that
My father was the most cheerful of all the murdered
His bravery left us with hunger and the gloating of others
And through thirty lunar years my mother waited
Until she herself became waiting
Childhood that was darkened by poverty and orphanage
Is here scoffing at me
At my life now darkened by war and exile
Wherever I lie, I find the Euphrates lying beside me
Extending its dreams to me
Dreams crammed with bombs and sirens
I wake up and roam the streets
Weakened by memories
Exchanging bombs' splinters with roses and poems
The aggression of bombardment with Mulla Othman Al Mousilly's lute
And the Maqams of al Gubbanchi

For the sea made wet by the songs of sailors 
Tears resting on its shores
Keeping lovers and children amused,
Shells falling asleep on the eyelids of the waves
And rocks reclining on its waist 
Counting the wishes falling from those passing

War also has its songs
Those that drenched the bosoms of mothers
With wailing and anxiety
Windows wide open for waiting
With no-one approaching
Doors eroded by sadness 
And whose steps are crumbling
Dreams dragged along the streets 
Oh streets, when will I see . . . 
The death procession of my grief?
Pale streetlights exhausted by the frost

And for war . . . 
Bombs whose heads rest on 
The pillows of our bodies
And sleep inside us
The murdered in their pockets
Sparrows fight the morning
And play with an orphan star forgotten by the night
Letters flow with the dawn

And I say:
Oh gasp of the south
Oh son of the sun
And the rivers whose mouths spit catastrophe
Just as prophets and holy books emanated from you
Wars have always failed you 
And you found yourself outside the borders of home
And once you thought of home
You were swallowed by exile
You blow your years and ashes is what you find
And scared that your dignity might be buried 
Every night you have a party 
For the Tigris in the farthest south
There's no south behind me so I can say: 
Here's my homeland
Nor is there south in front of me to cut through
I am the absolute south
Equipped with a long history of war and tragedy

Glories polluted by the whips of the governor 
And the general's ribbons of "honour"
Stripped me naked in the forbidden land
My night is filled with details of the barracks
The nighttimes password
The officer on duty
And the death squads

All the women I've known
And all women
Whose lust I am going to poison
With my foolishness
Have sniffed the neigh of hurdles in my breath
And my hallucinations
Have provoked their femininity
In the night's darkness

And I say:
Oh gasp of the two rivers
To shake hands with my alienation
Should I set my roots on fire?
And cast thirty years out to the sea
To make a feast for the fish
Do I have to take off my shirt
Which is full of bombs,
Insults and sanctions
To be embraced by--
A sky that doesn't belong to me
And I say:
Oh gasp of the two rivers 
In the far away cities
There is something calling for remembrance
In the distant lands exhausted by the sea
I dump my dreams
I have souvenirs from wars
And from cities wounds.