Oct 29, 2010

Coleman Barks




(Editor's Note: In the following poem we hear again the spirit of the Troubadour on the borders of heart, soul, and nation state. The poem predates the attack on Iraq, but its message is timeless. Barks read this poem at the Washington National Cathedral in hope that it may inspire the rest of us to envision our common future with such vitality and creativity. The poem is included in his book, Scrapwood Man. )
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Just This Once

President Bush, before you order air strikes,
imagine the first cruise
missile as a direct hit on your closest friend.

That might be Laura. Then twenty-five other
family and friends.
There are no survivors. Now imagine

some other way to do it. Quadruple
the inspectors. Put
a thousand and one U.N. people in. Then

call for peace activists to volunteer to go
to Iraq for two weeks
each. Flood that country with well-meaning

tourists, people curious about the land that
produced the great saints,
Gilani, Hallaj, and Rabia. Set up hostels

near those tombs. Encourage peace people
to spend a bunch of money
in shops, to bring rugs home and samovars

by the bushel. Send an Arabic translator
with every four peace
activists. The U.S. government will pay for

the translators and for building and staffing
the hostels, one hostel
for every twenty activists and five translators.

The hostels are state of the art, and they belong
to the Iraqis at the end
of this experiment. Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela,

and my friend, Jonathan Granoff at the U.N.,
will be the core organization
team. No one knows what might come of this.

Maybe nothing, or maybe it would convince some
Iraqis and some of the world
that we really do not wish to kill anybody,

and that we truly are not out to appropriate oil
reserves. We're working
on building a hydrogen vehicle as fast as we can,

aren't we? Put no limit on the number of activists
from all over that might
want to hang out and explore Iraq for two weeks.

Is anything left of Babylon? There could be informal
courses for college credit
and pickup soccer games every evening at five.

Long leisurely suppers. The U.S. government furnishes
air transportation, that is,
hires airliners from the country of origin and back

for each peace tourist, who must carry and spend the
equivalent of $1001 US
inside Iraq. Keep part of the invasion force nearby

as police, but let those who claim to deeply detest
war try something else
just this once, for one year. Call our bluff.

If this madman Saddam's WMD threat is not, somehow,
eliminated by next February,
you can go in with special ops and do it that way.

Medical services, transportation inside Iraq, along
with many other ideas that
will be thought of later during the course of this

innocently, blatantly foolish project will all
also be funded by the U.S.
government. There's a practice known as sama,

a deep listening to poetry and music, with sometimes
movement involved. We
could experiment with whole nights of that,

staying up until dawn, sleeping in tents during
the day. Good musicians
will be lured, with modest fees, to come: cellos,

banjos, oboes, ouds, and French horns. Hundreds
of harmonicae and the entire
University of North Carolina undergraduate

gospel choir. Thus instead of war there's much
relaxed, improvisational
festivity from March 2003 through February

2004. It could be as though war had already
happened, as it has.
And now we're in the giddy, broken open

after time. So let slip the pastel minivans
of peace and whoa be
they who cry surcease! I'll be first

to volunteer for two weeks of wandering winter
desert reading Hallaj,
Abdul Qadir Gilani, dear Rabia, and Scherazade's

life-prolonging thousand and one Arabian Nights.
I am Coleman Barks,
retired English Professor emeritus living

in Athens, Georgia, and I don't really consider
this proposal foolish.

Copyright by Coleman Barks

Biography
Coleman Barks is a gourd growing Southern boy who occasionally talks with Emily Dickenson over a bourbon in the late sweltering heat of a Georgia night. He is the author of several books of poetry including Winter Sky, Scrapwood Man, Tentmaking, and Gourd Seed. He is well known for his prolific translations of such mystical poets as Rumi, Lalli, and the Sixth Dalai Lama.

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