THE MORAL OBLIGATION TO BE INTELLIGENT ~ A new Poem by Thomas Simmons

Impressionistic art image from Ghetto Nuovo Square Monument in Venice, Italy – One of of seven bronze panels, by the artist Arbit Blatas (1908 - 1999), to remember the victims of the Nazi deportation.

THE MORAL OBLIGATION TO BE INTELLIGENT

N.B.: The title is from a collection of essays by Lionel Trilling

​ ~ A new Poem by Thomas Simmons ~

​An unarmed 20-year-old Guatemalan girl, Claudia Gomez, is shot dead
By a United States border agent just across the Texas line. A mother,
Silvana Bermudez, hugs her teenage son and younger daughter outside Houston
After US Immigration and Customs Enforcement catch up with them
And separate them, sending the children to an unspecified detention center
For an unknown period of time, and the mother to a similarly-unspecified
Though different detention center. . .Two days ago a US Senator from Oregon,
Jeff Merkley, was denied access to a Texas “immigration detention center
For children,” although he had every right. . .Even the language, “detention center,”
Is carefully chosen not to invoke the memory of the National Socialist German
Workers’ Party, which rose to power on the fear and hatred now gripping 
The United States. The president, elected with the assistance of a Russian dictator, 
Has declared himself to have “absolute power” to pardon himself,
Although because he has done “nothing wrong” there is no need to--
But he may do it anyway, because he can, because he thrives on chaos
And confusion and no one will stand up to him. Rome, Rome. . .
Even within the Republican party there is division, among the Democrats
A complete absence of leadership, and no one has the courage to warn
That an affirmation of dictatorship from Trump will lead to impeachment.
It won’t. A president with absolute power to pardon himself would not
Think twice about federalizing the armed forces, and would override
Congress’ Constitutional authority to refuse to fund such a move 
With an executive order. Thus the future of American government,
Should there be one, would come down to one man, Secretary of Defense
James N. Matthis, who could defy the president by ordering his forces
To stand down, although that conceivably could start a civil war.
 
The miracle of all this is not its brinksmanship, or its lies—the president
Created the separation-of-immigrant-parents-and-children as an intentional
Cruelty to stop illegal immigration, then falsely blamed that “horrible law”
On the Democrats, and few people outside the ACLU and the Society of
Friends blinked. .The miracle is the stupidity, blind stupidity. The five 
Extinctions that we know of in the inscribed geologic history of the planet didn’t
Have to do with stupidity, but rather a sudden build-up for various reasons
Of carbon dioxide: the first clue in each case was the dying-off of coral reefs,
Whose demises are sealed in the paleontological rock. The difference this time
Lies at the heart of consciousness: we do the evil and the careless and the reckless
Things we do in full knowledge of their evil, their carelessness and recklessness
And we do them anyway. Or we’re simply distracted. Yesterday right outside
My house, a man with a grandmother, a young daughter, and an infant in the car
Did a California rolling stop from my street onto 1st Avenue directly in front
Of a fully-loaded cement mixer. It was a miracle no one was killed. I had to call
911. And I am the key witness, corroborating the truck driver’s story. It’s important
To be a key witness, and to speak from that knowledge, whether the matter seems
Relatively minor or overwhelming in its stupidity or conscious evil. I labor 
In the fields of the unconscious because it is not labor, it is fascination and
Pleasure and brilliance beyond measure—and its limitlessness, as the self dissolves.
It is always a mixed blessing to return. Some day I will not. But in the mean-
Time, here, as discrete agents of consciousness, we cannot evade what Lionel
Trilling once called “the moral obligation to be intelligent.” If I am preaching here,
It is because I am angry, I don’t especially want to be here and never did. But
Compassion is as real as its opposite, and more powerful, in fact, because
Based in love, which is by nature expansive, rather than hatred, which is
By nature destructive of everything, including itself, excluding love. I go
Out into the world reluctantly, armed with a better armor than Gawain.






Thomas Simmons
June 5, 2018

Thomas Simmons © 2018

THOMAS SIMMONS taught for 24 years in the Department of English at the University of Iowa; in the spring of 2016 he started something new and has been writing ever since. Before that, he was an assistant and associate professor in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; before that, he was a doctoral student in English at the University of California, Berkeley, a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing at Stanford, and a Stanford University undergraduate. His seven previous books, one of which (The Unseen Shore: Memories of a Christian Science Childhood, Beacon Press, 1991) caused some offense in Boston, may be viewed at amazon.com site listed below. He lives in Grinnell, Iowa.

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