| Numbers, poets bear witness to the cost of war |
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Numbers, poets bear witness to the cost of war by Paul Schrag Mennonite Weekly Review - http://mennoweekly.org Numbers are, in a sense, the opposite of poetry. Cold and impersonal, numbers numb us. Give us the real, the tangible, the faces and emotions. Give us something to feel. Then we will understand. Here is a number: 1,000. It is the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq. It has been printed for millions to read, and it has been spoken while millions listen. Great care is taken to ensure its accuracy. Here is another number: More than 10,000. It is the number of civilian deaths in the Iraq war and occupation. Few know or care about it, and it is not exact. Numbers reveal and also obscure. People of flesh and blood and soul hide behind them. One death is a tragedy. One thousand deaths, or 10,000, is a statistic. The bigger the number, the less clearly we seem to see. What, if not numbers, will open our eyes? Here are the words of poets: My enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead. - Walt Whitman, 1865 We cannot see them, / the ghosts that inhabit our malnourished statistics . . . / It appears the one thing we cherish / more than petroleum or our children / is the greased machinery of destruction. - William O'Daly, 2003 These words come from Cry Out: Poets Protest the War (George Braziller, 2003). In this book, poetry speaks to us in ways that numbers and prose cannot. Jay Parini, whose work is included in the book, calls poetry "the conscience of language, which has been distilled and made pure by thought and care and love. Poetry really does matter, and it matters most in these times of peril." One of Parini's poems, "In Time of War," concludes: We heard the tallies and assumed the best, / believing in the cycles that must spin, / that war is just a prelude to the peace / that always passes understanding. History / was happy with this pattern, which it knew / by heart, wiping the blood from its big chops. Can poetry awaken a nation's conscience, as Parini hopes? How many people will read a book of antiwar poetry? How many will visit a Web site like www.iraqbodycount.org to view the numbers and read the commentary on topics such as U.S. indifference toward counting Iraqi civilian casualties, and what that indifference says about us? How many will change their minds about the war because of poetry or statistics? We cannot know, but we can keep spreading the word. Strong forces try to pull us - and our neighbors and relatives and fellow church members - into the ranks of those who do not question the Iraq war. It looms as a war that will go on for years, feeding on itself as it creates new enemies faster than those enemies can be killed. It has already been exposed as a grave mistake when judged by the calculations of national security, and as deplorable when judged by moral standards, Christian or otherwise. Numbers reveal their truth. Poets reveal theirs. Each speaks a language some will hear. The voices of faith and conscience must keep on calling the nations away from destructive paths.
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