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GRANDDAD’S POEMS
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To meet my granddad you would never guess what passions boiled beneath
his skin. He was a small man as attested by a photo of him with six grandsons
when we were only 12 or so. Even then, he no longer towered over us. |
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He was soft-spoken, a lover of books and music. In long ago years he had
been a Congregational minister, but gave it up to leave pettiness behind.
He turned to building houses, then to working for the postal service. Somewhere
in there he became a landlord, taking his toolbox by bus to make repairs. |
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War loomed, then arrived. Granddad had known it would. He could hear the
sabers rattling. He picketed at the waterfront against sending of scrap
metal to feed the Japanese war effort. He predicted that we would see that
steel again in bombs and bullets, and he was soon right. |
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He was also a poet, sending his poems to the Seattle Post Intelligencer
where a number were printed. When I want to “talk” with my granddad I get
out his poems. I have done it for many years. They always seem like they
are speaking today. Here is a poem I came across this week. It is the same
week in which Secretary of State Colin Powell declared that the war with
terrorism cannot be won until humanitarian conditions are improved around
the world. I was feeling sorry that nobody I talked to knew he had said
that, not on the week when the President presented the largest military
budget in recent history. Listen to my granddad’s opinion: |
Why do we arm
and arm, building bombing planes and battleships,
Brew poison gas,
breed deadly germs,
Waste wealth by
billions in the face of starving millions:
We who proudly prate
of being merciful and just;
Who falsely flaunt
upon our coins the words “In God We Trust.”
Why? Because we trust
neither God, nor men the sons of God,
Our brothers, neighbors,
just across the way,
Who, blindly groping
like ourselves, no better and no worse,
Lift up their supplicating
but self-righteous hands to heaven,
And cry for peace—a
peace that will not can not come,
Until our trust
and faith in God,
‘Til that divine
and quenchless spark
Within ourselves
and every man has been restored
And sight and sanity
return, and we shall see and know
That no true conquest
ever can be won by force of arms.
— Arthur D.
Weage (ca. 1943)
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Another poem he titled “The Patriot” has lines like these:
And is the man who scorns
the sword A traitor to his land?
Because he sees
the sword but fit For brutish coward hand? |
There’s many a shouting
patriot Who tramples in the mire
His country’s choicest,
best ideals, To sate his own desire. |
The only patriot worth
our praise Is he who loves his land
Because of what
she is or does With just and loving hand. |
And ere God wins this
warring world To sanity and peace,
The sword will
be the traitor’s badge And mark of cowardice. |
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Granddad wouldn’t have to write any new poems for today. The old ones work
just fine.
It is up to me to bring
them out of the dusty folder to speak the thoughts of poetic prophets in
times when passions boil.
—
Art Morgan, February 2002
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