Auden, War: Again

It's Time to Face the Music

September 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

In 1939, W.H.Auden, a British born poet, newly immigrated to the United States and living in New York City, wrote his poem titled, September 1,1939.  This is the day Germany invaded Poland and WW2 began.  Uncertain and afraid as the clever hopes expire.  These lines feel as true to me at this moment when the threat of WW3 looms and the clock runs out on the time left to protect our climate as they must have to Auden when he wrote them sixty-three years ago.

I was born in an Army Hospital seven months before the end of WW2. Waves of anger and fear, circulate over the bright and darkened lands of the earth.  My father, an Army Air Corp Captain, was stationed on Guam the day I was born. We lived in Army housing at Mitchell Field on Long Island for the first two years of my life.

My father never spoke about the war. But, after my parents died, I found, hidden in the basement, boxes and boxes of pictures of war. The unmentionable odour of death. Pictures of young, serious looking men, their arms behind their backs, standing beside shiny fighter planes; pictures of cities taken from the air, fluffy clouds concealing the outlines of tree lined Japanese streets which would soon be obliterated.   

Somewhere deep in my body’s neural pathways, war, with its waves of anger and fear, is implanted. And at this moment, these deeply inscribed preverbal childhood experiences of war are merging with two existential threats to life and I am, honestly, terrified.

I know something about narcissistic personalities from my years of work and I can tell you that Putin, a narcissistic madman consumed by the shame of losing his war in Ukraine, could, conceivably, choose to obliterate his shame by an atomic weapon.  And I know that if Americans choose to be enchanted by oil and drill baby drill as a way out of this war, we will pass the point in time beyond which we will cause irreversible harm to life on our planet.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

Even after WW2, conventions conspired to keep mankind from facing the existential threats to their existence. As evidence mounted about the threat to mankind from atomic weapons and Jonathan Shell wrote his groundbreaking book, The Fate of the Earth, followed by Bill McKibben’s book, The End of Nature, faces along the bar cling to their average day: the lights must never go out, the music must always play. For the last thirty years huge multinational corporations like Exon and JPMorgan Chase have conspired to hide the truths about the dangers of fossil fuels and they have invested heavily in Russian oil and gas.   

Well, here we are, and, to use a trite cliché for an existential moment: it’s time to face the music. As Bill McKibben writes in his Substack column, The Crucial Years, “past a certain point, there is no rescue.” 

Lest we should see where we are, lost in a haunted wood, children afraid of the night. 

We have to face this.  We have to grow up. We have act quickly. We are at war with Russia and we are at war with fossil fuels.  We must not let old post WW2 ideas about how to solve this problem — invest heavily in oil and gas to support a global consumer economy based on unregulated growth and expansion— cloud our minds now. 

We must, abracadabra, quick as a wink, immediately put pressure on banks to stop all investing in fossil fuel companies.  We must encourage the government to fight this war not with shiny planes and a massive ramp up of production of oil but with Bill McKibben’s idea of heat pumps for peace, which we ship to Europe so Europeans won’t need to rely on Russian oil AND we lower fossil fuel emission.  Oil is at the heart of Russia’s power and oil is at the heart of our climate crisis.  Becoming independent of that black evil now is essential. 

This could be a moment when we understand that converting to renewable energy, eating a meat-free diet, growing our own Victory Gardens, taking public transportation, starting local community climate action groups are all ways to show our support for democracy here, in Ukraine, and all over the world. This could be the moment of Great Turning when the threat to all democracies merges with the threats to life on this planet and we finally, finally, get it.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

This action plan below, the affirming flame you can light, comes to you from Third Act.  Fill out the form found by clicking below, then forward the form to everyone you know, who, composed of Eros and of dust, beleaguered by the same negation and despair, show an affirming flame!!

Write to President Biden and encourage him to get behind a plan to send clean energy to Europe, as the U.S. did with food and supplies in the years before we entered World War II. He can invoke the Defense Production Act to get American manufacturers to start producing electric heat pumps in quantity, so we can ship them to Europe where they can be installed in time to dramatically lessen Putin’s power and profits. It’s good for Europe, good for climate change, and good for American jobs. Click HERE to send your personal email to President Biden today.