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RE: My Open Letter to Israel & the Remarkable Response from an Israeli Reader
‘Children afraid of the dark
Who have never been happy or good’ - hope I’m not misquoting it.... But we are that, the recent election just a symptom of the disease, and I believe xenophobia is just that - the deadliest sort of sickness. I am, however, unconvinced one can truly be decent and xenophobic... One can, of course, be a coward.
Love right back. Not all is lost for as long as there poets and intellectuals like you to keep us in check :-)
Yes, you quote correctly (here's a reading I did of this tremendous poem, https://soundcloud.com/yahia-lababidi/september-1-1939-by-w-h-auden)
I agree this dark mood is a malady & we're all battling for our souls... Yet, viewed differently, these might be the last throes of the old world & these cries the birth pangs of a New World (it's just that the old guard are afraid of change and, in turn, noisily, terrified of letting go...)
Incorrigible optimist that I am, hopeless Idealist if you will, I don't believe much in evil people, per se... cowards, yes. But, those can be show the Light and made to follow it.
All is never lost, my dear @authorofthings Here, are the words of Auden, once more:
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.