"We talk about survivor’s guilt, but not about observer’s guilt. For journalists this is particularly acute, as we are paid to watch suffering and paid more during war. For poets, it’s even worse. It’s Adorno for the twenty-first century. The incomparable horror of Auschwitz has given way to Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq.
It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down.
It is not the houses. It is the spaces between the houses.
It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist.
It is not your memories which haunt you.
It is not what you have written down.
It is what you have forgotten, what you must forget.
What you must go on forgetting all your life.
And with any luck oblivion should discover a ritual.
From “A German Requiem,” by James Fenton"
Everyone is an Immigrant, Poetry and Reportage in Lampedusa, Eliza Griswold:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/243226
It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down.
It is not the houses. It is the spaces between the houses.
It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist.
It is not your memories which haunt you.
It is not what you have written down.
It is what you have forgotten, what you must forget.
What you must go on forgetting all your life.
And with any luck oblivion should discover a ritual.
From “A German Requiem,” by James Fenton"
Everyone is an Immigrant, Poetry and Reportage in Lampedusa, Eliza Griswold:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/243226
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