A War of All Against All

I know the truth.
Forget all other truths.
No need for people
anywhere on this earth
to struggle.
For what? Poets?
Lovers? Generals?

Look: it is evening,
Look: it is nearly night.
The wind is level now,
the air is wet with dew.
Soon all of us will sleep
Beneath the earth,
We, who never let each other
Sleep above it.

Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941)

This painting was born during the 1990’s out of deep foreboding. On the other side of the world from my home, the Soviet Union had collapsed, and in what had been Yugoslavia, Serbs and Croats were at war, killing each other, as if to say, “we no longer have to hate the Soviets, let’s hate each other.”

Here in Freedom’s Land and Bravery’s Home, we are living Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet upside down: “How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.” By presidential fiat, what had been our Dept. of Defense is now our Dept. of War. Against what? Against the usuals subjects, of course: whatever and whomever is not like us, especially those with skins darker than ours.

On a deeper level, we struggle against the Earth, our own Mother. Deeper still: we struggle against kindness, compassion, empathy, caring, gentleness, against whatever is deemed “not manly.”

At the center of the painting a woman embraces a man and sings a song he doesn’t want to hear: “I want a whole man, dear one, not just a half. Look: the sun rises at the edge of the woods. Look: it welcomes us to dance together in the snow. Embrace me and the woman inside of you. Embrace all of our sisters too, or your tomorrows will be only dismal repetitions of your yesterdays.”