Poetry, Part Thirty-six

The following is the last poem I included in COMING OF NUCLEAR AGE. Two current events would surprise all of us who served in missiles back in the 70's. The first was that, by the end of the 1980's, the Cold War would effectively be coming to a close. The second was that, well into the 2000's, with the Cold War over for two decades, missiles would still be in place in Minot and missile crews would still be pulling alerts.

And I am not sure which event would surprise any of us more. The cartoonist Jules Feiffer, whom I followed in the Calendar section of the L.A. Times, drew a cartoon of a boy and then young man who was dogged by the Vietnam War much of his life, not knowing what to do were it to be over. Those of us who were born and lived much of our lives with the Cold War, with the belief that it was fated to remain a conflict for our entire lives, took a number of years to realize that the world was different, though conflicts and nationalistic passions would continue.

Cold War

Each unwise succession,
bound to view all enemies as overpowering,
is forever, "How do we compare?"
We ask lest, by our not asking,
we be surpassed.
No situation, as such, precedes us,
so we comfort ourselves with uneasiness.
Marking any eve or event--
thrilled to feel that each is brightest,
each best, that we are a part.
You know this,
that other years beyond our own
prophesize themselves the last.
The constant blade of doom or disaster
that seems a threat across our whole historic length
is no closer then as now.
But far past and farther futures
threaten from self-importance:
Reminding of sabres, cannon, lasers,
mounted, dusted, on shadowed shelves,
as sun and soil fulfill.

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