(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Morning Open Thread: The Mighty Roar Of a Bomber Squadron Rehearsing Death [1] ['View Profile', 'Back Of Bourke'] Date: 2026-04-20 “All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” – Voltaire, 17th century French writer, philosopher and historian _______________________________________________________________________ “War-making is one of the few activities that people aren’t supposed to view realistically; that is, with an eye to expense and practical outcome. In all-out war, expenditure is all-out, imprudent – war being defined as an emergency in which no sacrifice is excessive.” – Susan Sontag, American essayist, critic, and human rights advocate _______________________________________________________________________ “War itself is, of course, a form of madness. It’s hardly a civilized pursuit. It’s amazing how we spend so much time inventing devices to kill each other and so little time working on how to achieve peace.” – Walter Cronkite, American journalist, television news anchor, cited as “the most trusted man in America” _______________________________________________________________________ Welcome to Morning Open Thread, a daily post with a MOTley crew of hosts who choose the topic for the day’s posting. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum. That’s a feature, not a bug. Other than that, site rulz rule. Morning Open Thread is looking for contributors — either occasional, or weekly. If interested, please contact officebss or Ozarkblue for more information So grab your cuppa, and join in! _______________________________________________________________________ April is National Poetry Month 13 poets born this week, from the 16th century to the 20th. They speak of war, of love and loss, hopes, fears, and all the costly damage we inflict on the only home we have _______________________________________________________________________ ________________ April 19 ________________ 1931 – Etheridge Knight born in Corinth Mississippi; African-American poet; after his family moved to Paducah , Kentucky, he became a frequent runaway, and though a bright student, he left school at 16, working as a shoe shiner but hanging out in juke joints, and playing pool and poker. He was exposed to “toasts” a form of oral story-telling poetry. He enlisted in the U.S. army in 1947, and served as a medical technician during the Korean War, until he was seriously wounded in November 1950, and began using morphine. Discharged from the army, he went to Indianapolis, and became a thief and drug dealer to support his opiate addiction. In 1960, he was arrested for armed robbery, and sent to prison. He began to read, started writing for prison publications, then submitted poetry to Negro Digest in 1965. Broadside Press published his first book, Poems from Prison. In 1968, he was released. Knight was briefly married to poet Sonia Sanchez, and was a writer-in-residence at the University of Pittsburgh, but his ongoing drug addiction caused the marriage to fail. In 1977, he received Methadone treatments which finally broke his addiction. He earned a bachelor’s degree in American poetry and criminal justice from Martin Center University in 1990, and taught the University of Pittsburgh and other schools before his death from lung cancer at age 59 in March 1991. His other poetry collections include: Belly Song and Other Poems, which was nominated was nominated for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize; Born of a Woman; and The Lost Etheridge, edited by Norman Minnick, and published posthumously in 2022. Haiku by Etheridge Knight Making jazz swing in Seventeen syllables AIN’T No square poet’s job. _________________________ “Haiku” from The Essential Etheridge Knight, © 1986 by Etheridge Knight – University of Pittsburgh Press ________________ April 20 ________________ 1950 – Michael Davitt born in Cork, in the province of Munster, Ireland; Irish reporter, a Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) presenter-producer-director and poet. A key figure in the Irish language poetry movement, he wrote most of his poems in the Irish language. In 1970, he co-founded Innti, an Irish language literary journal. In 1994, he was awarded the Butler Prize for Literature by the Irish American cultural Institute. Some of his dual-language collections include Selected Poems / Rogha Dánta and The Oomph of Quicksilver. He died unexpectedly at age 55 while out walking in the Sligo hills in June 2005. O My Two Palestinians by Michael Davitt (18/9/82, having watched a news report on the massacre of Palestinians in Beirut) I pushed open the door enough to let light from the landing on them: blankets kicked off they lay askew as they had fallen: her nightgown tossed above her buttocks blood on her lace knickers, from a gap in the back of her head her chicken brain retched on the pillow, intestines slithered from his belly like seaweed off a rock. liver-soiled sheets, one raised bloodsmeared hand. O my two Palestinians rotting in the central heat. _________________________ © 1982 by Michael Davitt ________________ April 21 ________________ 1816 – Charlotte Brontë born in Thornton, West Riding in Yorkshire; English novelist and poet, eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and wrote novels that became classics of English literature. Her father was an Irish Anglican clergyman, and the family lived in straightened circumstances. She is best known as the author of Jane Eyre, which was published in 1847, although it was originally published under the pseudonym Currer Bell. Several reviewers of the time criticized Jane Eyre for its unconventionalism, immorality, passionate exchanges, anti-authoritative and anti-Christian tendencies, and improbabilities within the storyline, even though some of them admitted the quality of the writing was remarkable. In 1848, Brontë released a preface with the second edition of Jane Eyre to defend the novel against criticism, while also acknowledging its success and thanking the press, public, and publishers. Charlotte Brontë was the last to die of all her siblings. She became pregnant shortly after her marriage to Arthur Bell Nicholls in June 1854 but died on March 31, 1855, almost certainly from hyperemesis gravidarum, a complication of pregnancy which causes excessive nausea and vomiting. Speak of the North! by Charlotte Brontë Speak of the North! A lonely moor Silent and dark and tractless swells, The waves of some wild streamlet pour Hurriedly through its ferny dells. Profoundly still the twilight air, Lifeless the landscape; so we deem Till like a phantom gliding near A stag bends down to drink the stream. And far away a mountain zone, A cold, white waste of snow-drifts lies, And one star, large and soft and lone, Silently lights the unclouded skies. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1907 – Sanora Babb born in Otoe territory (now Red Rock Oklahoma), but neither of her parents were of Otoe heritage; American novelist, poet, short story writer, and literary editor. Her father was a professional gambler, but she, her sister, and their mother lived in a one-room dugout on a broomcorm (sorghum) farm near Lamar, Colorado. She didn’t go to school until she was 11, but graduated from high school as valedictorian. Her novel The Lost Traveler, her memoir An Owl on Every Post, and a short story collection, Cry of the Tinamou, are all based on her childhood. After a year at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, lack of money caused her to transfer to Garden City Community College near Dodge City. She worked as a reporter for the Garden City Herald, then moved to Los Angeles in 1929, but a job offer from the Los Angeles Times fell through because of the stock market crash, and she was sometimes homeless until finding work as a secretary at Warner Brothers and as a radio script writer. She joined the Communist Party and visited the Soviet Union in 1936. In 1938, Babb went to work for the Farm Security Administration, making detailed notes on the Dust Bowl migrant tent camps in California. Without her knowledge, her supervisor shared her notes with John Steinbeck. The novel she wrote based on her notes, Whose Names Are Unknown, was shelved by Random House when Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath was published in April 1939, and won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her novel was finally published in 2004. In the 1940s, she worked as West Coast secretary of the League of American Writers, and edited a literary magazine, one of the first to publish stories by Ray Bradbury. She also ran a Chinese restaurant owned by cinematographer James Wong Howe. She and Howe had married in 1937 in Paris, but he was not allowed to become a U.S. citizen until the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943, and their marriage was not recognized by the state of California until the law banning interracial marriage was abolished in 1948, so they had in separate apartments in the same building. When Babb was blacklisted during the HUAC hearings, she moved to Mexico City to protect Howe, who was “graylisted.” Many of her poems appeared in literary magazines before her collection, Told in the Seed, was published in 1998. Sanora Babb died at age 98 in December 2005. It Is the Way the Deep Lush Grass by Sanora Babb It is the way the deep lush grass Roots bravely to the precipice edge, The way the wind mourns over the low bleak hills And blows into the sea, The way the rain drives over the downs Staining the trees and shining the low stone walls The way a mockingbird sings his hesitant copied notes Before the rain … the notes breaking sharply Over the white rock cliffs that march along The sea. The way these quiet, lonely country sounds Come into me, that turns my heart’s anger Into an upthrust fist, as the army planes Roar over, startling the sheep a little, Waking the shepherd hardly, raising his head; It is expected, yet unbelieved, that bombs Will drop on London, a few hours away, That gas will tear a choked and ragged strip Of death through England. The radio, the newsreel and the press show The death-head muzzle of the twentieth century man: The government makes them now: 11 million people Wait and doubt, believe and unbelieve the fears That burn in their minds at night, When they hear the monotonous roar of the surf Hurled back to itself by the mighty roar Of a bomber squadron rehearsing death. _________________________ “It Is the Way the Deep Lush Grass” from Told in the Seed and Selected Poems, © 1998 by Sanora Babb – Muse Ink Press. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1930 – Hilda Hilst born, influential Brazilian author, poet, and playwright; noted for her poetry collection, Presságio (Omen), and her novels, Com meus olhos de cão (With My Dog Eyes) and A obscena senhora D (The Obscene Madame D). She died at age 73 of a chronic heart and pulmonary condition in 2004. IX by Hilda Hilst Your hooves bandaged so I won’t hear your hard trot. Is this, little mare, how you’ll come for me? Or because I thought you severe and silent you’ll come as a child on a shard of china? Lover because I disdained you? Or with the airs of a king because I made you queen? _________________________ ‘IX” from Of Death. Minimal Odes, © 2018 by the Estate of Hilda Hilst – translation © 2018 by Laura Cesarco Eglin – co-im-press ________________ April 22 ________________ 1943 – Louise Glück born in New York City and grew up on Long Island; American poet and essayist; winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Wild Iris; Library of Congress Special Bicentennial Consultant (2000-2002); Poet Laureate (2003-2004); won 2014’s National Book Award (Poetry) for Faithful and Virtuous Night; and the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature. Her father was a Hungarian Jewish immigrant who helped invent and market the X-Acto Knife. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University without earning a degree. In her mid-twenties, she published her poetry collection Firstborn to mixed reviews. Glück has since published over a dozen collections. Anniversary by Louise Glück I said you could snuggle. That doesn’t mean your cold feet all over my dick. Someone should teach you how to act in bed. What I think is you should keep your extremities to yourself. Look what you did— you made the cat move. But I didn’t want your hand there. I wanted your hand here. You should pay attention to my feet. You should picture them the next time you see a hot fifteen year old. Because there’s a lot more where those feet come from. _________________________ “Anniversary” from Meadowlands © 1996 by Louise Glück – Ecco/HarperCollins ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1951 – Andrew Hudgins born in Killeen, Texas, but raised in Alabama; American poet and essayist He earned degrees from Huntingdon College, the University of Alabama, and an MFA from the University of Iowa. Hudgins married novelist Erin McGraw, and is Humanities Distinguished Professor of English at Ohio State University. His poetry collections include: After the Lost War: a Narrative, a speculative biography in verse of Southern poet Sidney Lanier, which won the 1989 Poets’ Prize; The Never-Ending; Ecstatic in the Poison; American Rendering; and A Clown at Midnight. Air View of an Industrial Scene by Andrew Hudgins There is a train at the ramp, unloading people who stumble from the cars and toward the gate. The buildings’ shadows tilt across the ground and from each shadow juts a longer one and from that shadow crawls as shadow of smoke black as just-plowed earth. Inside the gate is a small garden and someone on his knees. Perhaps he’s fingering the yellow blooms to see which ones have set and will soon wither, clinging to a green tomato as it swells. The people hold back, but are forced to the open gate, and when they enter they will see the garden and some, gardeners themselves, will yearn to fall to their knees there, untangling vines, plucking at weeds, cooling their hands in damp earth. They’re going to die soon, a matter of minutes. Even from our height, we see in the photograph the shadow of the plane stamped dark and large on Birkenau, one black wing shading the garden. We can’t tell which are guards, which prisoners. We’re watchers. But if we had bombs we’d drop them. _________________________ “Air View of an Industrial Scene” from Saints & Strangers, © 1985 by Andrew Hudgins – Houghton Mifflin Co ________________ April 23 ________________ 1564 (traditional date, based on his April 26 baptism) – William Shakespeare born in Stratford-Upon-Avon; English playwright, poet and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language, and the world’s greatest dramatist. His poetry output includes the narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, but he is best known as a poet for his Sonnets, published in 1609. He died at age 52 on April 23, 1616. Sonnet 29: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes by William Shakespeare When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, (Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate; For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1852 – Edwin Markham born Charles Edwin Markham in Oregon when it was still a territory. His parents divorced, and his mother brought up Markham and his siblings on a farm in central California. Disliking farm labor, and frustrated by his mother’s refusal to buy him books, or pay for his education, he left home at 15 until his mother agreed to pay for college. He earned a teacher’s certificate, and taught while taking Classics courses at Christian College in Santa Rosa, then was school superintendent in Placerville, a California gold rush town. Markham sold his first poem in 1880, then regularly contributed poems to Harper’s, Century, and Scribner’s. Markham wrote The Man With a Hoe, first published in the San Francisco Examiner in January, 1899. It was republished in newspapers across the country. With his new-found celebrity, Markham went on tour doing readings and lectures. Though he remained popular with readers, as his style never evolved, critics began calling him “old-fashioned.” On his 80th birthday, there was a celebration at Carnegie Hall, attended by President Hoover. In 1936, Markham suffered a debilitating stroke from which he never fully recovered. He died at age 87 in his home on Staten Island, New York, in March, 1940. Joy of the Morning by Edwin Markham I hear you, little bird, Shouting aswing above the broken wall. Shout louder yet: no song can tell it all. Sing to my soul in the deep still wood: ‘Tis wonderful beyond the wildest word: I’d tell it, too, if I could. Oft when the white, still dawn Lifted the skies and pushed the hills apart, I’ve felt it like a glory in my heart – (The world’s mysterious stir) But had no throat like yours, my bird, Nor such a listener. _________________________ “Joy of the Morning” from The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems, by Edwin Markham; published in 1899 by Doubleday & McClure ________________ April 24 ________________ 1936 – Vera Rich born as Faith Elizabeth Rich in London; British poet, journalist; historian, and translator. She studied at St Hilda’s College of the University of Oxford and Bedford College, London. In 1959, her poetry attracted the attention of the editors of John O’London’s Weekly. Her first collection of verse, Outlines, was privately published in 1960 to favorable reviews, selling out within six months. She was a notable translator of the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, and Like Water, Like Fire – the first anthology of Belarusian poetry translated into a western European language. She founded Manifold, a “magazine of new poetry” in 1962. Her other poetry collections, which often include her translations as well as her own work, include: Portents and Images; The images swarm free; and Poems on Liberty. Vera Rich died at age 73 in December 2009. Haiku by Vera Rich Two mountains afar, One sun-gilt, one snow-shower clad – Here, it is raining. _________________________ “Haiku” from Portents and Images, © 1963 by Vera Rich – The Mitre Press ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1943 – Maureen Scott Harris born in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada, but grew up in Winnipeg; Canadian poet She has a BA and a Library Degree from the University of Toronto, and worked until 1993 as a rare books cataloguer and in other capacities at the University of Toronto Library. She has since been an author, editor, reviewer, freelancer, has worked in a bookstore, and as a manager at Brick Books, one of the few poetry-only publishers. In 2005 she won the Trillium Book Award for poetry for Drowning Lessons. In 2009, Scott Harris was the first non-Australian awarded the WildCare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize. Her poetry collections include: A Possile Landscape; Drowning Lessons; Slow Curve Out; and the bilingual Whispers from the Water / Sussurri dall’acqua. Be the River by Maureen Scott Harris Be the river then, straight or crooked, its hidden energy pulling it ever down at a speed that’s barely visible. Be its red clay trough, be the way it wears its own being-in-motion into place there, the polished and runnelled banks which curve and hold, be both flow and bank and then the rising above. Be the air above which pushes against its surface smoothing or ruffling, snatching for something. Be the tangle of small willows crowding the bank, leaning over their reflections, growing dizzy watching the clouds drift among the fish beneath them. Be willows and be too the stones in the gravel bank whose slight movements mirror the way water meets air, who bask in weather and are patient. Be the silt washing in from the rain, and the muskrat swirling at the bank, be the splash and trickle of sounds without identity, half-formed words surfacing, do you hear? Be the swallows who skim along the water’s surface twisting their narrow wings to rise and dart and dip down again. Be all these and more, whatever falls into the water and through its skin to find its robust and hidden depths, tumbling towards its wide mouth, singing. _________________________ “Be the River,” © 2001 by Maureen Scott Harris, appeared in Arc, winter 2002 issue ________________ April 25 ________________ 1873 – Walter de la Mare born in Kent, in southern England, prolific English poet, and fiction author, the son of a Bank of England official. His mother was related to Robert Browning. Educated in London at St. Paul’s Cathedral Choir School, he worked for Anglo-American Oil Company (1890-1908) in London as a statistic clerk. His first published story Kismet appeared in 1895 under a pen name. In 1908, he was awarded a yearly government pension of £100, and devoted himself entirely to writing He won the 1947 Carnegie Medal for children’s books, and published 13 collections of poetry. He died at age 83 in June 1956. The Listeners by Walter de la Mare ‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest’s ferny floor: And a bird flew up out of the turret, Above the Traveller’s head: And he smote upon the door again a second time; ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said. But no one descended to the Traveller; No head from the leaf-fringed sill Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, Where he stood perplexed and still. But only a host of phantom listeners That dwelt in the lone house then Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight To that voice from the world of men: Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair, That goes down to the empty hall, Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken By the lonely Traveller’s call. And he felt in his heart their strangeness, Their stillness answering his cry, While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, ’Neath the starred and leafy sky; For he suddenly smote on the door, even Louder, and lifted his head:— ‘Tell them I came, and no one answered, That I kept my word,’ he said. Never the least stir made the listeners, Though every word he spake Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house From the one man left awake: Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, And the sound of iron on stone, And how the silence surged softly backward, When the plunging hoofs were gone. _________________________ “The Listeners” from Come Hither: A Collection of Rhymes and Poems for the Young of All Ages, by Walter del al Mare (1923) – Alfred A. Knopf 1957 reprint ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1939 – Ted Kooser born in Ames, Iowa. He worked for insurance companies for over 35 years, writing seven books of poetry in his spare time. U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry (2004-2006). He used his time as laureate to further the cause of poetry with American readers. Partnering with the Poetry Foundation, he began the “American Life in Poetry” program, which offers a free weekly poem to newspapers across the United States, aiming to raise the visibility of poetry. He has been honored with four Pushcart Prizes, and the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Delights & Shadows. Abandoned Farmhouse by Ted Kooser He was a big man, says the size of his shoes on a pile of broken dishes by the house; a tall man too, says the length of the bed in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man, says the Bible with a broken back on the floor below the window, dusty with sun; but not a man for farming, say the fields cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn. A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves covered with oilcloth, and they had a child, says the sandbox made from a tractor tire. Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole. And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames. It was lonely here, says the narrow country road. Something went wrong, says the empty house in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste. And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard like branches after a storm—a rubber cow, a rusty tractor with a broken plow, a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say. Abandoned Farmhouse’ from Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems, © 1980 by Ted Kooser, University of Pittsburgh Press _____________________________________ G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies! ____________________________________ Picture: Trojan War – vase with black figures [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/4/20/800022922/community/morning-open-thread-the-mighty-roar-of-a-bomber-squadron-rehearsing-death/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/