Quick remembrance

Two posts in one night, but I have to share this beautiful poem. We just commemorated 60 years since the first nuclear bomb fell, and when I came across this poem, I welled up with tears. How easy it is to destroy our enemy, or in the case with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, destroy generations upon generations of our enemy. How much harder it is to look at our enemies from a human lens.

For the Unknown Enemy
by William Stafford

This monument is for the unknown
good in our enemies. Like a picture
their life began to appear: they
gathered at home in the evening
and sang. Above their fields they saw
a new sky. A holiday came
and they carried the baby to the park
for a party. Sunlight surrounded them.

Here we glimpse what our minds long turned
away from. The great mutual
blindness darkened that sunlight in the park,
and the sky that was new, and the holidays.
This monument says that one afternoon
we stood here letting a part of our minds
escape. They came back, but different.
Enemy: one day we glimpsed your life.

This monument is for you.