{"id":15787,"date":"2023-09-20T12:11:29","date_gmt":"2023-09-20T17:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=15787"},"modified":"2023-09-22T09:19:04","modified_gmt":"2023-09-22T14:19:04","slug":"ukraine-poem-by-kevernacular-may-we-light-the-world-with-hope-and-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=15787","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine poem by Kevernacular, may we light the world with hope and action"},"content":{"rendered":"
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My well-used Ukraine candle from Door County Candle Co. Photo by Kevin Lynch<\/em><\/p>\n

Ukraine Fire (in the Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In this moment something calls,
\nSo, I listen, mute receptacle, past the painful loss of another younger sister,
\nrealizing thousands of Ukrainians have lost how many family members.
\nI\u2019ve been reading about war as contemplated in the marvelous anthology,
\nRag and Bone Shop of the Heart: Poems for Men<\/em> 1<\/p>\n

So, the hell-on-earth of the Ukraine War rises acrid from my gut,
\nyet what have I suffered of horridly, brutally, inhumanely genocidal devastation?
\nI reflect, yes, we have more of the hoary old West versus East,
\nand the festering of poisoned power, delusion of hate-bile wallowing in past glory.<\/p>\n

So, I sit glumly and light my Ukraine candle from Door County,
\nwith its blue and yellow colors, summoned to fire
\non days that seem apt to the moment and sentiment
\nof accumulating lost innocent lives, souls stripped from mangled bodies.
\n“Parents very old that had one son,” President Zelenskyy described a typical loss,
\nadding, Russians have abducted and “weaponized” tens of thousands of Ukrainian children.<\/p>\n

Is this inflamed point in history imploring madly upon that fiery candle tip?<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

For perspective, America\u2019s war of North and South never fades as a barometer
\nof bloody border tragedy at a local level, of fraternal countrymen dying
\nfor a perversion of The Declaration\u2019s ideals of liberty for all.<\/p>\n

\u201cGettysburg \u2013 a town of only 250,000 inhabitants \u2013 was one makeshift burial ground, fetid and steaming\u201d is how Garry Wills pointedly describes it.2
\nSomehow, Lincoln transcended and, yes, abstracted, the tragedy, but with rhetorical genius
\nembraced, emancipated, and let the healing begin, North and South, a horribly wounded nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cLincoln sensed, from his own developed artistry,
\nthe demands that bring forth classic art \u2013
\ncompression, grasp of the essential, balance, ideality,
\nan awareness of the deepest polarities in the situation
\n(life in the city coming from the death of its citizens).\u201d 3<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Might someday, sooner than later, Ukraine hear its version of the Gettysburg address?
\nUntil then, so much remains to mourn and yes, fight for.
\nWe have witnessed from afar war crimes to begin rivalling Hitler and Stalin.<\/p>\n

Each a mad Ahab in his time, even somebody\u2019s hero! 4
\n(\u201cThe blackness of darkness,\u201d Melville called it, he the writer who, upon meeting — at a dinner of unfathomable spiritual trembling — Hawthorne, our great chronicler of dark American Puritan spirit. Melville, himself from stern Calvinist stock, then transformed his drifting whale yarn into a looming, cascading, doomed nation-ship, bursting at its blackest seams
\namid the ocean\u2019s rhythms, engulfing all, to roll,
\n\u201cas it rolled five thousand years ago\u2026\u201d
\ninto the great American novel,
\nhaving swallowed and subsumed
\nthe rainbow-hued crew, Ahab\u2019s blood and the harpoon-pierced White Whale\u2019s,
\ntwo bloods perhaps commingling in dark destiny.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So, now a wider question, \u201cWhat Can We Hope For<\/em>?\u201d
\nYes, another voice rises from the grave,
\nor in the wind of ashes aloft in air,
\ncircling into small silos of sound,
\nthe song whispering, now sonorous
\nof the speaker (who asked thusly),<\/p>\n

Richard Rorty, Richard Rorty\u2026
\nthe name itself rings in alliterative echoes,
\nlike an old folk hero.
\nHe, recently deceased American pragmatic philosopher,
\nposthumously urges us past philosophy and ideology,
\nto effective action<\/em>,
\nto something to reasonably hope for, as a whole nation. 5<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Could this Ukraine tragedy, as Wills says happened in the Civil War,
\nbring an emergent form of victory \u2013
\nblood welling \u2018round new roots,
\nrising rose-red with thorny shoots,
\nnew blood from shed blood,
\nspirit anew in the proud, billowing, blood-streaked blue and yellow banner\u00a0\u2013
\nof this European democracy,
\nwhen it wins, finally wins, its sovereignty, again?<\/p>\n

How sure is the West, to assist in agonizing fits, what might\u2019ve been won and spared by now?<\/p>\n

Beyond the Civil War, America\u2019s politics provide further dragging baggage,
\na sordid history of Empire building, often tragically partial, in the name of \u201cdemocracy.\u201d
\nAnd even today, in America, remain those who perversely idolize Putin,
\nAnd his demagogic types, with strong-manly ways,
\nwhich Richard Rorty once warned us of. 5.
\nWhither American Christianity which heeds Jesus?
\nCan a Godless, sociopathic man be \u201cour savior\u201d? 6<\/p>\n

Perhaps the Ukraine candle evokes my Catholic upbringing,
\nthe flaming sentinel of vigil, of faith in righteousness holy spirit.
\nSo, the spirit takes the deepest of inhalations and sighs
\nlike a great buffalo of the plains,
\nyet don\u2019t let the candle go out!
\nIt shudders from the hot-breath wind.
\nFlame rises again, its small, defiant fire.
\nHard to believe but, hear this:
\nThis Door County Candle Company has delivered
\none million dollars of direct aid to Ukraine
\nfrom its army of blue-and-yellow sixteen-ounce candles!<\/p>\n

If that is not one — bigger than who\u2019d imagine \u2013
\nanswer to Richard Rorty\u2019s plaintive question,
\nI don\u2019t know what is!<\/p>\n

Soon I\u2019ll buy and light another candle.
\nThe spirit flickers again,
\nLight amid the Blackness of this Darkness, spreading around the globe,
\nas surely as changing climes, enshrouding Mother Earth.
\nCan we ever feel their unfathomable pain?
\nThat which is the world’s is Ukraine, Ukraine!<\/p>\n

— Kevin Lynch, September 20, 2023<\/p>\n

____________<\/p>\n

Here is the link to the Door County Candle Company’s Ukraine candle. All proceeds go to Ukraine:<\/strong>\u00a0https:\/\/doorcountycandle.com\/products\/ukraine-16oz-candle<\/a><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Robert Bly, James Hilman, Michael Neade, ed., Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart: Poems for Men<\/em>, Harper Collins, 1992<\/li>\n
  2. Garry Wills, Lincoln at<\/em> Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America<\/em>, Simon and Schuster, 1992, 21<\/li>\n
  3. Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg,<\/em> 52<\/li>\n
  4. For a book-length discourse on the relation between Moby-Dick<\/em> and totalitarianism, see C.L.R. James, Mariners, Renegades & Castaways: Herman Melville and the World We Live In,<\/em> Dartmouth, 1978<\/li>\n
  5. Richard Rorty, What Can We Hope for? Essays on Politics<\/em>, Princeton, 2022<\/li>\n
  6. From whence come the political rationalizations of Christian Evangelicals, “speaking with God?” “(The mind is its own place, the mind has a mind of its own) This is a domain that, without ever having to name it, the right has always best known how to manipulate.” Jacqueline Rose, in “The Analyst,” a review of Jamaican-British writer\/activist Stuart Hall’s memoir Familiar Stranger<\/em>, The New York Review of Books, <\/em>Sept. 21, 2023, 50.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    My well-used Ukraine candle from Door County Candle Co. Photo by Kevin Lynch Ukraine Fire (in the Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart) In this moment something calls, So, I listen, mute receptacle, past the painful loss of another … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[356,901,2179,1798,2174,2183,2162,2182,2181,2195,2167,2166,2172,2170,2193,592,2168,2186,2189,39,2184,2169,2163,2173,2159,2192,2178,2185,2165,2171,2194,2180,2176,1445,2187,2161,2160,2164,2191,2175],"class_list":["post-15787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com","tag-moby-dick","tag-ahab","tag-american-pragmatic-philosopher","tag-c-l-r-james","tag-calvinist","tag-christianity","tag-door-county-candle-company","tag-empire-building","tag-european-democracy","tag-familiar-stranger","tag-garry-wills","tag-gettysburg","tag-hawthorne","tag-hitler","tag-jacqueline-rose","tag-jesus","tag-lincoln","tag-lincoln-at-gettysburg-words-that-remade-america","tag-mariners","tag-melville","tag-mother-earth","tag-north-and-south","tag-president-zelenskyy","tag-puritan","tag-rag-and-bone-shop-of-the-heart-poems-for-men","tag-renegades-outcasts-herman-melville-and-the-way-we-live-now","tag-richard-rorty","tag-robert-bly","tag-russians","tag-stalin","tag-stuart-hall","tag-the-civil-war","tag-the-great-american-novel","tag-the-new-york-review-of-books","tag-totalitarianism","tag-ukraine-candle","tag-ukraine-war","tag-ukrainian-children","tag-what-can-we-hope-for-essays-on-politics","tag-white-whale"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-46D","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15787"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15810,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15787\/revisions\/15810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}