Will they retitle
The Evening News
“The Daily Nightmare?”
Who started this bad dream?
Things seemed to be going ok.
Not so many years ago, I wept
to see a Black President
celebrating his victory in this land
conceived in the sin of slavery.
I took myself out
for breakfast the next morning,
scarcely able to believe
life could be so good!
But there are, it seems,
a lot of turns in the road
of our collective existence.
“Just when…”
Ah, but there were more
happy surprises, too.
Like the day when peering
through the plastic window
of the newspaper dispenser
I saw people—or angels—
dancing atop the Berlin Wall
The shadow over the “Soviet Bloc”
quickly receded after that
and even the Russian Bear itself
awoke from its slumber
of values for a few years.
We didn’t handle all that
so well, I guess,
and so it’s led to this.
My thoughts turn to
the history I was born into—
the page after the horrors
whose shadow could still be felt,
and that I soon learned about in school:
How the legally-appointed chancellor of Germany
dismantled democracy in 53 days
and the spectre of the Nazi menace
took shape, then galloped through Europe
like the rider in Rousseau’s painting, “War”.
The world passed darkest night
when Great Britain stood alone
against the predators.
Slowly, the tide turned,
but not before millions
were gassed and their gold teeth
extracted for the monetary “value”–
false teeth more valuable than human life—
and the mushroom cloud rose
over two cities in Japan.
Compassionate God
did not provide
a “deus ex machiina”
but let things take their course
until the postwar order
that came out of that night
made things safer for all—
“Never again!”—
But now what?
Does anybody know?
(a brief essay about the inspiration and creation of this painting at the New York Art Students League, where I was a student)
https://publishedwritingsofmaxreif.jimdoweb.com/meher…/
