May 3, 2009 archive

Power has to be insecure to be responsive.

There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.

Ralph Nader

I enjoy discussion, debate, analysis.  I have deep appreciation for the thoroughness which this community has parsed every issue of our country’s shameful involvement in torture.  Not so my ex-wife.  I was once on the telephone trying to help my brother think his way through a tough patch when Doris called dismissively from the kitchen, “Tell him to bake a black velvet cake.”  While the rest of us passionately debate the role of the new administration in cleaning up the messes of the old, Doris is busy responding to the reality by doing what she can to find justice for her client at Guantanamo, Abdul Aziz Naji.  We all should be so lucky as to have Doris and her partner Ellen as fierce advocates.

I recently received a letter from Doris and Ellen.  My purpose is to share this letter, both for showing the effects of the current climate on those doing the yeoman’s work and for asking for contributions from those who are moved to support the legal defense of one Guantanamo detainee.

It is appropriate that time be measured

by the stark shadow cast by a stake in summer

or by the flow of water in the river

where Heraclitus saw time’s ironies

since, seen as time and fate, they are alike;

the movement of the mindless daytime shadow

and the irrevocable running on

of river water following its flow.

Just so, but time discovered in the deserts

another substance, smooth and of some weight,

that seemed to have been specifically imagined

for measuring out the ages of the dead.

And so appears this instrument of legend

in the engravings in the dictionary,

an object graying antiquarians

will banish to a dusty underworld

of things — a single chessman, a broadsword,

now lifeless, and a clouded telescope,

sandalwood word away by opium,

a world of dust, of chance, of nothingness.