Poland’s Tragedy – 96

On the occasion of the terrible tragedy,
I offer this poem to the memory of the victims.

96

The Vistula flows backward today
From the shoreline of Gdansk
To the watershed of the Carpathian
Even her banks are weeping

For sorrow is a flooded field
For whom springtime will not come
The early shoots of rye retreat
Beneath the rising waters

Justice is the asking question
The why? The how? Why us?
In the mouths of half-mast fathers
And mothers with bleary eyes

Red & White today black-banded
What’s lofty rises half its height
Though unified in sorrow stand
Her mass of grieving mourners

Too early for the words to mean
But spring-time seems to say
Should ninety-six have to perish
May death bridge old divides

Be comforted, Polska, to know
The Eagle is not alone, nor will be
For as She stands for freedom
For freedom stands the world

***

Article on Lech Kaczynski from The Economist
Article I co-authored with Wojciech Kosc for Transitions Online
(Contact me for full text)

Pork or Piggish?

Animals it would seem are forever at the mercy of man. They are whipped to do field work. Their eggs and milk are promptly snatched away. Dogged by cold in winter and tormented by flies in summer–in the end, none escape the butcher’s knife.

George Orwell, who died at 46, was best known for Animal Farm,  a political fable about a group of forward-thinking animals who wrest control of the farm from their owner.  Orwell’s novella (28,000 words) was rejected by three publishers because the Soviet Russia he wished implicitly to criticize was still as yet a British ally.

Old Major–a prize-winning boar–has a dream revealing a future in which animals have taken over the farm from their relentless taskmaster Mr. Jones. The ideologue Old Major inspires the others to revolution with a sing-song that goes:

Beasts of England, Beasts of Ireland/ Riches more than mind can picture/ Wheat and barley oats and hay/ Shall be ours upon that day

Old Major dies but his battle message is picked up by Snowball and Napoleon, two pigs. Into the furry ears of the rabbits and the lazy minds of woolly sheep they foment their ideas about revolution. Not long after the  takeover, Napoleon usurps power from Snowball, as the heart of a pig is easily corrupted.

The farm’s various calamities are attributed to Snowball. He’s scapegoated for the failed windmill project and disparaged of the war wounds other pigs will claims were never really earned. Later Snowball will be written out of the revolution’s history entirely. In the “Battle of the Cowshed,” one pig will say, Snowball was really just an enemy spy.

The animals white wash seven commandments on the black tar of a nearby barn to shore up the moral foundations of their new society. These few and noble ideals are soon disregarded–the commandment, “No animal shall kill another animal” is changed to read, “No animal shall kill any other animal without cause.” Thus a select groups of pigs and their gang of guard dogs pave the path for the occasional bloodletting of the weaker animals.

At the start, they made a promise never to do business with humans. But by the end, Napoleon and his numerous litter have invited the adjacent farmers over to play cards and drink beer. When both man and pig pull an ace of spades from the pile, Orwell concludes,

“From man to pig, and pig to man, it was impossible to say which was which.”

Fast-forward some four decades, to the fall of the Berlin wall, when Animal Farm was made  required reading for high school students in Poland. Across the Soviet bloc, communists were losing their grip on power and their ideas were open to criticism. Because allegory is a shade away from commenting overtly on political matters, it’s a safe choice for a society in transition. In Poland, Animal Farm [Folwark Zwierzęcy] helped to prod the collective cows to action without having to point an incriminating finger at those still in power.

For its general accessibility and long shelf life *process* gives it [9 out of 10.] It would seem to me that Animal Farm deserves a contemporary reworking, an allegorical novella about the rise of China and the threat posed by its intolerance for human rights.