what can I say / but this, this

i read this on the subway on the way to coney island this weekend, and if it doesn't just scream eerily contemporary i don't know what does.

it's both heartening that the language is so pitch perfect and eloquent and depressing to realize it could've been written yesterday.

robert hayden - in the mourning time

As the gook woman howls
for her boy in the smouldering,
as the expendable Clean-Cut Boys
From Decent American Homes
are slashing off enemy ears for keepsakes;

as the victories are tallied up
with flag-draped coffins, plastic bodybags,
what can I say
but this, this:

We must not be frightened nor cajoled
into accepting evil as deliverance from evil.
We must go on struggling to be human,
though monsters of abstraction
police and threaten us.

Reclaim now, now renew the vision of
a human world where godliness
is possible and man
is neither gook nigger honkey wop nor kike

but man

permitted to be man.