{"id":138,"date":"2010-11-19T18:42:58","date_gmt":"2010-11-19T23:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/?p=138"},"modified":"2010-11-19T18:42:58","modified_gmt":"2010-11-19T23:42:58","slug":"james-lasdun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/2010\/138\/poems\/james-lasdun\/","title":{"rendered":"James Lasdun"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Question<\/strong><\/p>\n

We’re eating outside with our friends,
\nWoodstock Buddhists; our kids and theirs
\nare lighting sticks on citronella candles
\nto throw them at the woods like burning spears;
\nthe Rainbow Family of Living Light
\nare drumming in Magic Meadow; I’ve drunk enough
\nthat all I want to do is close my eyes,
\nwhen a voice rings like a summons from the darkness:
\nmy six-year-old son asking: “Dad,
\nis America good or bad?”<\/p>\n

He’s heard us talking; the litany:
\nstolen elections, torture memos, wars;
\nseen the picture of the hooded man
\nHaj Ali, our oppressor-victim,
\narms spread, posed on his box
\nlike Jesus on his mountain
\nblessing the peacemakers
\n(but for the dangling wires)
\nand wants to know whose side he’s on:
\nhis own or someone else’s side against him…<\/p>\n

What can I say? That depends
\non what rots mean by ”good” or ”bad”
\nor for that matter “America”,
\nwhich might be a fool and his goons
\nwar-gaming in the White House,
\nbut might be, say, the Women in Black
\ndown on the Green with their banner,<\/em> Bring Our
\nTroops Back,
\nor the Rainbow People up in the meadow
\ndrumming in the full moons,
\nor might just be just us and our friends…?<\/em><\/p>\n

I think how I moved here;
\nsettled with that long shock of ease
\nas if in my first lawn chair,
\nbefore it could dawn on me
\nI’d merely exchanged the curse
\nof being forever elsewhere
\nfor that of the settler – worse,
\nthe children of settlers,
\nfor whom the root of existence
\nis precisely their fathers’ sins…<\/p>\n

He’s waiting for his answer.
\nI open my mouth to speak
\nbut something stalls me; a strange
\nheaviness on my tongue
\nas if after all I’d pledged silence
\nor struck some nocturnal pact
\nover whatever act,
\ndoubtful or downright wrong,
\nsecures our presence here,
\nand I can’t seem to say a damn thing,<\/p>\n

and he drifts away, back to his game
\nof fending off the trees
\nthat look as though they’d marched up the hill
\nto mass at the edge of our lawn
\nwhile we sat here talking,
\nand a dim shame
\nclouds in as if there were really something to do
\nother than drink and chill
\nand listen to the drums beat
\nand try to keep our eyes open.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Question We’re eating outside with our friends, Woodstock Buddhists; our kids and theirs are lighting sticks on citronella candles to throw them at the woods like burning spears; the Rainbow Family of Living Light are drumming in Magic Meadow; I’ve drunk enough that all I want to do is close my eyes, when a […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems","category-4-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions\/139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}