[Vision2020] The Wall Within

[Tom Hansen]

I came across an old poem this morning while looking for mailing addresses 
for Christmas cards.

As the Iraqi civil war slowly dies down and Afghanistan heats up, our 
government seeks yet another country to "liberate".

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"The Wall Within"
by Steve Mason

Most real men 
hanging 
in their early forties
would like the rest of us to think
they could handle one more war
and two more women.
But I know better.
You have no more lies to tell.
I have no more dreams to believe.
I have seen it in your face 
I am sure you have noticed it 
in mine; 
at the unutterable, 
unalterable truth of our war. 
The eye sees 
what the mind believes. 
And all that I know of war, 
all that I have heard of peace, 
has me looking over my shoulder 
for that one bullet 
which still has my name on it-- 
circling 
round and round the globe 
waiting and circling 
circling and waiting 
until I break from cover 
and it takes its best, last shot. 
In the absence of Time, the accuracy of guilt is assured. 
It is a cosmic marksman. 
Since Vietnam, 
I have run a zigzag course 
across the open fields of America 
taking refuge in the inner cities. 
>From Mac Arthur Park 
to Washington Square 
from Centennial Park 
to DuPont Circle, 
on the grassy, urban knolls of America 
I have seen an army of combat veterans 
hidden among the trees.. 
Veterans of all our recent wars. 
Each a part of the best of his generation. 
Waiting in his teeth for peace. 
They do not lurk there 
on the backs of park benches 
drooling into their socks 
above the remote, turtled back of chess player playing soldiers. 
They do not perch upon the gutter's lip 
of midnight fountains 
and noontime wishing wells 
like surrealistic gargoyles 
guarding the coins and simple wishes 
of young lovers. 
No. 
I have seen them in the quiet dignity 
of their aloneness. 
Singly, in the confidence 
of their own perspective. 
And always at the edges of the clearing. 
Patrolling like perimeter guards, 
or observing as primitive gods, 
each in his own way looks out to the park 
that he might "see" in to the truth. 
..Some, like me 
enjoy the comfortable base 
of a friendly tree 
that we might cock one eye 
to the center of the park 
toward the rearing bronze horsemen 
of other wars 
who would lead us backwards to glory. 
Daily, they are fragged 
by a platoon of disgruntled pigeons 
saying it best for all of us. 
And with the other eye, 
we read the poetry of America the Beautiful 
as she combs her midday hair 
and eats precise shrimp sandwiches 
and salad Nicoise catered by Tupperware-- 
and never leaves a single crumb. 
No wonder America is the only country 
in the world which doesn't smell like food. 
..and I remember you and me 
picnicking at the side 
of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the rain 
eating the Limas and Ham from the can 
sitting easy in our youth and our strength 
driving hard bargains with each other 
for the C-ration goodies 
we unwrapped like Christmas presents. 
Somehow it really seemed to matter 
what he got versus what you got. 
It wasn't easy trading cheese and crackers 
for chocolate-covered peanut butter cookies! 
And the pound cake--Forget about it! 
I knew a guy would cut a hole in it 
and pretend it was a doughnut. 
For six months I watched that 
and refused to ask him about it. 
I did finally. And you guessed it. 
He hated pound cake. 
And remember the water biscuit 
that came in its own tin?-- 
I think they had the moxie to call it a cookie-- 
it came with the marmalade 
and was made by that outfit in Chicago 
we promised to burn to the ground someday. 
Damn, how did your buddy, the animal, 
ever eat that crap? 
Then, we'd happily wash down the whole mess 
with freckly-faced strawberry Kool-Aid 
straight from the canteen 
some days there'd be goofy grape 
(anything to keep from choking 
on the taste of purified water). 
Bleck! 
But somehow I sensed all the while 
that I'd never be able to forgive myself 
for enjoying your company so much 
or being so good at the game we played. 
We were the best--you and I. 
In our parks 
there are whole other armies of veterans 
mostly young and mostly old 
but always ageless 
who are not alone. 
They share with their families 
and their friends 
these open-aired 
above-ground time capsules 
of our national culture. 
They read aloud to themselves 
and their children 
from the plaques and statues 
monuments and markers 
those one-line truths 
of our common experience 
as if there could be a real significance 
in words like Love and Hate tatooed 
on the clenched, granite fists of America. 
Sometimes, when I am angry 
it seems as if I could start my own country 
with the same twenty Spill and Spell words 
we shake out at the feet of our heroes 
like some crone spreading her hands 
over the runes prior to a mystic reading. 
Words like: 
peace and sacrifice, war and young 
supreme and duty, service and honor 
country, nation, men and men and men again, 
sometimes God and don't forget women! 
Army Air Force, Navy, Marines and freedom. 
Then, just as quickly, the anger passes 
and reverence takes its place. 
Those are good words, noble words, solemn 
and sincere. 
It is the language of Death 
which frightens me; 
it is unearthly to speak life concepts 
over the dead. 
Death is inarticulately final 
refusing forever to negotiate. 
That, and the awesome responsibility 
we place eternally on our fallen 
teenage sons, 
seems unbearably heavy 
against the lengthening prancing 
shadows of Sunday's frisbees. 
Apparently, there is no period 
which can be placed after sacrifice. 
All life is struggle. 
an act of natural balance 
and indomitable courage. 
As it is with man 
so it is with mankind. 
If we permit Memorial Day 
to come to us every day, 
we ignore the concept of sacrifice 
and dilute its purpose. 
When we do that 
we incur the responsibility 
to effect change. 
If we are successful, 
the sacrifice has renewed meaning 
It seems there is no alternative to life. 
But there may be to war... 
The values of our society 
seem to be distributed in our parks 
and find only confusion and sadness. 
Strange, I have observed no monuments 
to survivors. 
No obelisk to mark the conflict 
of those who risked 
and lived perhaps to fight again 
or perhaps to speak of peace. 
Nowhere, yet, a wall for the living. 
There is no wonder 
guilt is the sole survivor of war. 
We do not celebrate like after combat 
because our concept of glory 
lives neither in victory nor in peace 
but in Death. 
The are plaques at the doorsteps 
of skyscrapers; 
in New York on the 10th and the Avenue 
of the Americas it reads: 

IN MEMORY OF THOSE 
FROM 
GREENWICH VILLAGE 
WHO MADE THE SUPREME SACRIFICE 
IN THE KOREAN CONFLICT 
1950-1953

In Nashville's Centennial Park 
in a shaded wood 
to one side of the Partheon 
built to scale and to the glory 
which was Greece, 
a small statue stands; 
it is inscribed: 

I GAVE MY BEST 
TO MAKE A BETTER WORLD 
1917-1918 

I stood there on fall 
ankle deep in leaves 
and looked up at the night sky 
through a hole in a ceiling of trees 
wondering how much better the world 
might look from up there. 
>From the moon 
only one manmade object 
can be viewed by the naked eye: 
The Great Wall of China 
(a tribute to man's functional paranoia). 
It's a peculiar perspective 
because we're a lot closer 
and the only manmade object we see 
is THE Wall in Washington, D.C. 
(the veterans' solemn pledge to remember) 
There is one other wall, of course. 
One we never speak of. 
One we never see, 
One which separates memory from madness. 
In a place no one offers flowers. 
THE WALL WITHIN. 
We permit no visitors. 
Mine looks like any of a million 
nameless, brick walls-- 
it stands in the tear-down ghetto of my soul; 
that part of me which reason avoids 
for fear of dirtying its cloths 
and from atop which my sorrow and my rage 
hurl bottles and invectives 
at the rolled-up windows 
of my passing youth. 
Do you know the wall I mean? 
I learned of mine that night in the rain 
when I spoke at the memorial in Washington. 
We all noticed how the wall ran like tears 
and every man's name we found 
on the polished, black granite face 
seemed to have our eyes staring back at us, 
crying. 
It was haunting. 
later I would realize 
I had caught my first glimpse 
of the Wall Within. 
And those tears were real. 
You and I do not walk about the Wall Within 
like Hamlet on the battlements. 
No one with our savvy 
would expose himself like that 
especially to a frightened, angry man. 
Suicide loiters in our subconscious 
and bears a grudge; an assassin 
on hashish. We must be wary. 
No. We sit there legless in our immobility 
rolling precariously in our self-pity 
like ugly Humpty Dumpties 
with disdain even for the king's horses 
as we lean over the ledge to write 
upside down with chalk, bleached white 
with our truth 
the names of all the other casualties 
of the Vietnam War 
(our loved one) 
the ones Pentagon didn't put in uniform 
but died anyway. 
Some because they stopped being who 
they always were 
just as truly as if they'd found 
another way to breathe. 
Others, because they did die 
honest-to-God casualties of the 
Vietnam War 
because they lost the will 
to breathe at all. 
My mother gave her first recital 
at Carnagie Hall at age eleven. 
Sometimes, when I was a boy 
I'd watch her play the piano 
and wonder if, God, after all, was not a woman. 
One evening when I was in the bush 
she turned on the 6:00 news 
and died of a heart attack. 
My mother's name is on the Wall Within. 
You starting to get the idea? 
Our lists may be different 
but shoulder to shoulder 
if we could find the right flat cloud 
on a perfect, black night 
we could project our images 
upon a god-size drive-in theatre 
wide enough to race Ben Hur across 
for a thousand years... 
Because the Wall Within 
adds up the true cost of war... 
We can recite 58,012 in our sleep 
even the day after they update it, 
but how many of those KIA had kids? 
How many of them got nice step-dads? 
Whose wall do they go on? 
And what about you vets 
who came home to your wife and kids 
only to divorce her because 
there wasn't anyone to be angry at?

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
 
"For a lapse Lutheran born-again Buddhist pan-Humanist Universalist 
Unitarian Wiccan Agnostic like myself there's really no reason ever to go 
to work."

- Roy Zimmerman


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