A Conversation with Martin Heidegger
9
Kurt, my philosopher friend from Hamburg, said,
"There's no end; when Karin was 17, she asked
'Will I always feel dirty for being German?"'
You had a quarter of a century after D-Day,
Martin, and what for her? What could you say?
Kurt told her what Hans' parents had said:
"There are no perfect people, my daughter, my son,
and perhaps none who came close." Yes, say that
Kurt, if it helps--what is and was should not be
the child's burden it is--but add, the hard thing
is not being an abstraction, but being human,
aware of and fighting crimes done in our name.
The hard thing's knowing how little changes--
after Nuremberg, Vietnam, Lebanon, Haiti
(the endless streams of those drowning in
our litanies of innocence). It's hard knowing
our overseers of spirit or letter, if not as bad,
aren't better, knowing dirt from soap amidst
a rat's-ass ethics we live by, nests of convenience
wherein we heap lives with the daily grounds
of our lies: graduates not sure what century
Hitler reaped, how, or what side we were on then
or are now, for whom newspapers pitch sixth-grade
speech in fifth-grade thought, to compete with
networks advertisers manage for Congress and us,
along with our lives. Truth/vermouth distributors
say and scholars echo, is what clients buy,
and through them publishers show us postmodernity's
more perfect union--claws and fangs
of wolves with the hearts and brains of sheep.
The hardest thing is knowing slave from free,
chameleons and turtles from poets and humanists.
Van K. Brock
A Conversation 10 | Ein Gespräch 9
Contents | Mudlark No. 4