Nuclear War

I've been reading the spring 1914 newspapers now and then. It gives the sense of experiencing history firsthand. There's also the sense of rich detail hidden beneath the necessary generalities and brevity of Internet magazine history articles or blog posts. Today's front page contained descriptions of the execution at Sing Sing Prison of some members of the Lenox Avenue Gang, an early twentieth century New York street gang.

There's something eerily conspicuous by its absence, however. Something big. That is, any indication that the beginning of one of the worst wars in human history is a mere four months away.

Our era is also one in which a catastrophic global war is not at the forefront of our thinking. I'm not suggesting a one-to-one parallel. It's just that life can take unexpected turns. Now, as much as then. 

I was a few kilometers from the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. When the plane hit, our building shook. Almost everyone who remembers that day recalls how incongruent the weather was, how fresh the air, how blue the sky.

I found this poem by Edwin Muir, about nuclear war, in an essay by Mark Haddon:

Barely a twelvemonth after

The seven days war that put the world to sleep,

Late in the evening the strange horses came.

By then we had made our covenant with silence,

But in the first few days it was so still

We listened to our breathing and were afraid.

On the second day

The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.

On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,

Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day

A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter

Nothing…

*              *               *                *               *

But the most important thing is this: Life's uncertainty is the source of a deeper happiness. In light of impermanence, the true preciousness of people and things shines through.