War and its aftermath: A meditation
Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996, died last week at the age of 88. I admit when I read the story, the name meant nothing to me at first, but then I looked up a couple of her poems and thought, "Oh, yeah!" Unfortunately, I don't read Polish and so I can only read her poetry in translation, but those translations make clear that this was a woman with a unique view of the world, a unique understanding of human society and the way it works. Of the few of her poems that I have read. this is a favorite of mine. I find it particularly relevant just now as the war in Iraq ends (at least for us) and the one in Afghanistan starts winding down (at least for us). THE END AND THE BEGINNING by Wislawa Szymborska After every war someone has to clean up. Things won’t straighten themselves up, after all. Someone has to push the rubble to the side of the road, so the corpse-filled wagons can pass. Someo...