I Think the Poets Must Save Us

I just finished 6 Tshirts-caricatures for a group of students going to see the Avengers tonight. For free, of course, in keeping with my determination to remain a starving artist. Just simple paintings on Tshirts-and they were so tickled it made my day.

While I painted they played 70s songs to encourage me. After awhile one girl said, “Why did you guys have such depressing music?”

I answered, (inadequately), “Because we were in the middle of the Vietnam war. Our friends were dying and then we found out we were lied into the war and I think maybe we felt like…America was not what we had  been told, like it was eating its own young?”

I’m not a poet, but some of the song writers were. I’m not a poet, but I think we need them. Poets (bards) were highly honored in ancient Ireland, and I think I see why. I think I see why dictators get rid of poets, artists and musicians right away.

I’m not a poet, but Wilfred Owen was. He died in WWI but wrote this before he died, about old men sacrificing young men. Creative people-speak! The world needs you.

 

The Parable of the Young and Man and the Old

So Abram rose and clave the wood and went

And took the fire with him and a knife.

Isaac, the first-born spake and said, My Father

Behold the preparations, fire and iron,

But where is the lamb for this burnt offering?

 

Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps

And builded parapets the trenches there

And stretched forth the knife to slay his son

When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,

Saying, lay not thy hand upon the lad,

Neither do anything to him. Behold.

A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;

Offer the Ram of Pride instead.

 

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,

And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

-Wildred Owen