[dar-list] Of the Empire

[Joe Modugno]

. . . Is anyone a Mary Oliver (the poet) fan?  This is from her new collection. I used this, along with
Dar's song, in my college class last week.  It was part of our unit on "War and Sustainability."  I also
used her poem "Iraq," from the same collection.


 
Mary Oliver
>From Red Bird (2008)
 
 
 
                      Of the Empire

We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.


--Joe Modugno
   Milton, MA