Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
Erin Moure
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Homage to the Mineral of the Onion (I and II)
I read Sam Hamill's call for names and poems, and if you would accept a name and voice from north of you, from Canada, please add mine, Erin Moure, to the list. I'm a poet with a small heap of books and awards in my own country (though what matters to me is just, simply, words...), and I deeply deplore the paradigm of confrontation in which this whole Iraqi disarmament debate, with its terrible threat of war, is being conducted. A paradigm of shared growth, shared caring, and of listening to others and respect would allow, I'm sure, a different dialogue and ending, in Iraq, in Palestine, and in Iran and North Korea, and for that matter, in downtown Montreal from where I write. I realize that from within one paradigm: confronting arms with More Arms and BIGGER ARMS, it's hard to see the possible good of any other.
So I can only say No to a war in Iraq conducted as the President of the USA intends to conduct it.
I'd also like to say that, as a Canadian who also lives part-time in Europe (where it seems I am expected to explain Americans) I am very much appreciating in recent weeks the more publicly visible presence of an American anti-war movement.
And I attach a poem (Moure/poem.doc), taken from a longer series. The original is in Galician (the language of the region of Spain castigated by the horrible fueloil from the "Prestige"). The translation into English is mine.
Homage to the Mineral of the Onion (I and II)
I
In the onion, there’s something of fire. That fire known as Fog. The onion is the way fog has of entering the earth.
Into the soil. Through the green leaves of the onion.
Look how its leaves extend up into the air. Look how, once cut, an onion’s leaf has air inside it.
Air is the generosity of fog. With fog, there is generosity on earth. These two thoughts are identical.
They are two thoughts that sustain the earth. In these belicose days that promise wars, look how the onion helps fog to sustain the earth.
II
The onion is also the way soil shares the earth with fire.
Through the leaves of the onion, songs pass from earth up to the fire. Fire, as you know, is fog. And the songs – the noise of feet when they step upon soil.
But only (I admit) if the feet are clad in work boots, gum boots. Never with feet clad in boots worn by soldiers.
If the feet are clad in such boots, of soldiers, the leaves clam up. And the song goes into the earth, where it lies forever. And the fog turns itself into gunshots so as to vanish. And at this time, it is not possible to share the earth.
