Essays

Guest Editorial, Portsmouth Herald, May 2009

This is Torture

You remember--in Through the Looking Glass--the exchange between Humpty Dumpty

and Alice?  Humpty has been twisting words; Alice takes exception:

    'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.

    'When I use a word,' Humpty dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just

    what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.'

    'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you CAN make words mean so many

    different things.'

    'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master--that's all.'

Dick Cheney means to be master of the torture debate.  He uses a two-pronged approach.

First, he re-defines "torture" as "enhanced interrogation," thereby eliminating any notion

of illegality and moral taint.  Second, he claims such "interrogation" yields vitally

important intelligence.

Let's look at the first prong.  If I tell you the library--which is up the block to the left--is

down the block to the right, you'll never find it on my directions.  When "stop" equals

"go" and "slow" equals "fast," we're in for a difficult ride.  Deceiving words undermine

rules of the road.  Someone could get killed.

The greatest disservice a leader can do to his people is corrupt their notion of good.

When Shakespeare's witches chant "Fair is foul, and foul is fair" we know murder is in

the air.  Confucious understood the case for words:  the first order of business in

establishing good government is to correct language.  Otherwise what is said is not

meant, things don't get done, morals deteriorate, justice fails, and people fall into

confusion.

Webster's tells what torture is.  So do Title 18, Part 1, Chap. 113C, sec. 2340 of the U.S.

Code; The United Nations Convention Against Torture; and the Geneva Accords.  In this

debate, would it not be prudent to consult them?

As for the second prong--Mr. Cheney claims vital information was obtained as the result

of these "enhanced" techniques.  Shall we take him at his word?  Are we safer today?

The National Intelligence Estimate of July, 2007, suggests otherwise:

    ...Al-Qa'ida is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat to the Homeland,

    as its central leadership continues to plan high-impact plots....We assess the

    group has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack

    capability, including:  a safe haven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal

    Areas...operational lieutenants, and its top leadership....(W)e judge that the

    United states currently is in a heightened threat environment.....

Anyone who has followed the latest news knows the Taliban are on the march in both

Afghanistan and Pakistan.  How do they continue to recruit?  What have "enhanced

interrogations" accomplished?  The December 11, 2008 Senate Armed Services

Committee report inquiring into our treatment of detainees found:

    Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists are taught to expect Americans to abuse them.

    They are recruited based on false propaganda that says the United states is out to

    destroy Islam.  Treating detainees harshly only reinforces that distorted view,

    increases resistance to cooperation, and creates new enemies.

What of the ticking bomb scenario?  We've got one detainee and one hour to find the

bomb.  Millions of lives are at stake.  But--the hypothetical assumes certainty:  we have

the guilty man, he has the information, he'll give it to us if we squeeze tight enough.

Maybe.  Maybe not.  The question is--do we base policy on a flawed hypothetical

that may never occur?

Consider this:  How one perceives you is directly related to how he treats you--or would

treat you if he had the chance.  A barbarian cuts off the head of a captive and the world

stands in shock and disgust.  Humanity condemns the brute.  This is no small thing.  Who

will now join the butcher's cause?

But let the barbarian be caught and stripped, kept awake for weeks in a cold cell, smashed

into walls, stuck in a box with insects, water-boarded, and--voila!  You have a martyr for

whom endless souls will blow themselves--and us if they can--up.

For every plot we may have throttled out of the throat of a detainee, the seeds of a

thousand plots have been sown, ten thousand necks have been stiffened.

Please God, may Alice keep asking her questions.  May Humpty have his great fall.

                                                                                                                 --John Perrault

                                                     _____________

Portsmouth Poet Laureate Acceptance Remarks, April 14, 2003

What can this mean? To be a poet laureate? We've had but three: Esther, Robert and Maren. Let me think&"Laureate," from the laurel tree in ancient Greece . A branch tossed in the Aegean, floating into the Mediterranean, out through the Strait of Gibraltar , across the broad Atlantic , around the Isles of Shoals, up the Piscataqua to Puddle Dock and ferried here to City Hall. Proof we are not alone! Proof we are connected to all the distant lands and peoples surrounded by seas on this great blue ball of earth. Proof our mighty River takes its water seriously--knowing, as it does, that its briny mix contains the very elements that once bubbled in a bay bathing the Levant --knowing it carries the branch of the laurel on its rippling back.

For Apollo, you see, god of the lyre, of poetry, had longings for Daphne--who, after being chased up and down the Peneus and round about Attica , just at the moment he caught hold of her sleeve, turned into a laurel tree. From that moment, Apollo took the laurel as his emblem, decreeing that the laurel branch would forever be the prize of honor for poets. Not money, mark you, but a bunch of leaves.

Kings and lords of the ancient realms required verse makers at their courts and halls--skalds for the Scandinavians, bards for the Welsh, skops for the Angles and Saxons. In England , this led to the official Versificator (sounds like a sin), and a good deal of ridicule by his peers--for how could one be a poet if, at the same time, he was being paid to sing the party line?

The first formal poet laureate in England was John Dryden, 1668. The office has been held by hacks and greats, including William Wordsworth and Alfred Tennyson. At the least, they were expected to compose lines to memorialize significant events--the passing of a hero, the crowing of a queen.

In the United States , we have had an official poet laureate since 1986--prior to that, the position was known as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. That position was inaugurated in 1937, the year the Legislators surmised, probably erroneously, that poetry couldn't hurt them. Billy Collins now sits in the chair, as he strives to make clear that even in the public sphere, poetry does matter.

Closer to home, New Hampshire 's poet laureate, Marie Harris, is, as we speak, forcefully engaged in the production of the first nation-wide public conference of state poet laureates. They will be focusing on the very question before us today: what is the role of the poet in public life? What place does the poet have in the vital cultural/ethical/political conversations going on across this wide land?

So we come to the term now linked to laureate--the poet. What is a poem anyway? Taking life by the throat, says Robert Frost. Finding yourself in someone else's snapshot, says Charles Simic. Emotion recollected in tranquility, says William Wordsworth. Perhaps all would agree with T.S. Eliot that at the very least, poetry must produce pleasure, but at the same time must also expand our consciousness and reawaken our hearts to the pulse of the soul in the every day things of this world. A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom, says Frost. You see, it is not just a matter of scanning lines and rhyming words. (Though lines and rhymes may count for everything in a particular poem: Tell all the truth, but tell it slant/Success in circuit lies, says Emily Dickinson. then quickly adds: Too bright for our infirm delight/The truth's superb surprise! Not to argue with Emily.) Not merely meter, but a meter making argument. (Frost again.)

My predecessors have poured their hearts into a poetic foundation that every contractor would be proud of: Esther Buffler's CD, High on Poetry--compact, audible, tangible. But the words--the poems--touch us in the place where the physical merges with the metaphysical, the body with the spirit. Robert Dunn's lyrical lines nesting on the parking garage walls. We see them there, suddenly, unexpectedly, as we climb the concrete stairs, slightly out of breath, only to find--surprise! The words flying off the walls, circling our heads, dive bombing our hearts. Maren Tarabassi's anthology of new poems for an old city--Portsmouth Unabridged--the title taking us over the spans that link us to the world. Reminding us that we live on water, by water, from the gundalow on the cover through the pages pulling us out to see our neighbors from off shore--giving us a new perspective on the people that make this city hum.

It is time, now, to start building on that foundation.

--John Perrault    

                                                        ________________

--from fall 2003 Accent on Home and Garden : "One October Afternoon"

Flat on my back in the swale behind the barn, I'm soaking up the sun splash, the deep ocean blue of sky. October, and I'm out to make the last mow of the season. Before the rains come on. Before the maples and oaks strew their leafy autumn wear over this ragged lawn. I'm out with my machine poised to be pushed around, but I'm in no hurry. It's quiet just now. There's only the chirp of the crickets in the long weedy grass calling the birds back for one last round. And this grass is so comfy, cradling me the way it does. My mind wanders, flooding with fall reflections.

There's the cloud I sailed on as a freshman one blissful October afternoon in Maine . The one that lifted me up through the gold and crimson trees and floated me over the roofs below--over the three-deckers, the cozy ranches, and corner stores. I had just walked my first sweetheart home from school. Her parents were at work in the mill. There was a kiss--a fleeting brush of lips--and that was all. But that was everything. I remember afterward singing to myself as I floated out on the steel blue sea of sky. How clean and clear the air seemed at such a height, how deep became my breathing. How happy I would have been to swim forever on the surface of that sea until I drowned. Now, looking out through the blazing maples, I see myself that afternoon loping across the old neighborhood lawns, a sprinkle of leaves flaming the close-cropped grass. I pick a bright orange leaf off a low leaning limb, tuck it in my book, and begin the long slow jog home.

And there's a beech tree yellowing in the woods. It reminds me of another kind of tree that brushed its gold against the windows of our house. In the factory town where I grew up, elms out-numbered maples two to one. Come fall, if you were far-sighted enough to see through the craze of football, there they were--the elms. Tall, majestic, golden--in the sharp October light they spread a canopy of calm over the pot-holed streets. As I turned my bike onto Jefferson Street , I entered a dark cool cathedral. I felt the presence of some watchful power. Those lofty, benevolent trees took me under their protective limbs. One October afternoon, coming home from school, I found Jefferson Street exposed for what it was: six stumps bleeding in the sun, three on each side of the street. For years they were the only sign that once upon a time God had gardened there.

Just beyond reach a few purple asters nod in the weeds along the fence. A bee hovers over them, humming to itself, studying the starworts like some astronomer checking his charts. Now it's focusing on the largest one, testing the best place to light. I'm testing an old image flickering in my memory: clusters of pale blue asters edging the cliffs that protect East Point , lighting up thickets of bayberry and bittersweet. Now an Audubon preserve, the Point was--and is--a place of refuge from the practical world of town. The world of school, of work--of duty, decorum, and common sense. Out on the Point the sky rolls the ocean away beyond the marker buoys, beyond the farthest bobbing mast, until the ocean turns itself into sky. Here your mind and heart open to the heaven of the sea, and you slowly come adrift of all things holding you to earth, tying you to shore. My father loved it there. The October day he died, I pushed out through the thickets to gain the ledge above my favorite cove. I took along a clump of asters and hobbled over shingles to the water's edge. The tide was high, the cold waves crashing on the rocks. I tossed the asters to the wind, lay back on the beach and closed my eyes. The bright sun turned my lids to orange--the color of that leaf tucked in my book. A week later, I brought a copy of my poem, Off East Point," to his headstone. I lay down on the fresh cut grass and read it to him. It was an afternoon much like this--save all the mowing done.

--John Perrault    

More of John's essays and poetry columns may be viewed on the Portsmouth Poet Laureate Program's Web site at www.pplp.org
An interview, ballad selections, and another essay appear on the Seacoast's premier historical web site, www.seacoastNH.com