Martyrs to Truth
Tell It Slant
Truth tellers, raise your pens! It is our job to be brave. It is our job to recognize the miracle of being alive. It is our job to pay attention, be astonished, tell it! (all words you’ve heard before from poets, teachers, and me.)
I had never heard of Charlie Hedboe. I can tell you now, I will never forget this satirical magazine. Terrorists have made certain that the staff, and policemen and women will never be forgotten. They are martyrs. We have lessons to learn.
Writers who have left guidestones for truth include Lutheran Theologian, Deitrich Bonhoeffer, who was hanged days before Allied Army forces freed Buchenwald concentration camp. He left his truth behind in numerous sermons and books, including, The Cost of Discipleship. Osip Mandlestam, the great modern Russian poet, was born in Poland and grew up in Russia. His wife, Nadezhda, memorized his poems so they would not be read by Soviet purgers.
In Nadezhda’s book, Hope Against Hope, published by The Modern Library in New York, 1999, a preface by Joseph Brodsky begins: If there is any substitute for love, it is memory. To memorize, then, is to restore intimacy. Osip Mandlestam died in a forced labor camp in 1940. (The date is not certain.)
Writers telling truths include Mandlestam’s friend, Anna Akmatova. To get her to write a Stalin-positive poem, Communists took her son hostage, tortured him, and upon receipt of a “good” Russian poem, released her son to her care. The cost of truth telling is severe.
When I read of the massacre at Charlie Heboe’s headquarters, I was reminded of the New York Times headlines on 9/12, BEYOND BELIEF! Staff editor Stephane, cartoonists Bernard, Georges, Jean, and Philippe, deputy editor Bernard M., copy artist Franck, copy editor Mustapha, columnist Elsa, and maintenance and welcome desk manager Frederick, are names to remember. Include policewoman Clarissa, and policeman Ahmed.
We have freedom of speech here and in Paris. With freedom comes responsibility. I believe that “responsibility” in this sentence is responsibility to truth.
My immediate reaction to the news from Paris was, “what a waste of life and talent. What a waste of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters.” It doesn’t matter to family that these people were martyrs. It matters that they are gone.
What do I do when I am overwhelmed? I go to my poetry bookcase and look for friends, lucille, Robert (Bly), William (Shakespeare and Stafford), Jim (Moore), and James Wright. I take out Elizabeth (Bishop), thumb through Raphael (Campo), and Liesl (Mueller). AND there’s Wendell.
A Timbered Choir opens to page 192:
To my granddaughters who visited the Holocaust Museum on the day of the burial of Yitzhak Rabin
Now you know the worst
we humans have to know
about ourselves, and I am sorry,
for I know that you will be afraid.
To those of our bodies given
without pity to be burned, I know
there is no answer
but loving one another,
even our enemies, and this is hard.
But remember:
when a man of war becomes a man of peace,
he gives a light, divine
though it is also human.
When a man of peace is killed
by a man of war, he gives a light.
You do not have to walk in darkness.
If you will have the courage for love,
you may walk in light. It will be
the light of those who have suffered
for peace. It will be
your light.
I read this and thought, Wendell, shine on!
On a recent Saturday, my husband and I took the Blue Ridge “short cut” to Swannanoa. It was early in the day, the sun rising. I had never seen winter trees in this light. It was a new “slant,” and I saw them differently. I had been thinking about what I would write for this column, and there she was, Emily.
Soon as I got home, I pulled out my Complete Poems of Emily Dickenson, and looked up first lines. Emily never disappoints.
poem 1129
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind –
I’ll be honest with you, I always liked this poem, but I didn’t “get it” until I saw that morning sun and realized I was seeing trees in a different light, or “slant.”
At the end of it all, I come back to Mandlestam’s widow, and her book. She was a smoker, and often sat in the dark reciting her husband’s poems. I want to burn like this, a red hot hope in the dark.