Change

You know... we all get SO FUCKING bent out of shape about terrorism, since 2001. Turn on any sort of media since then, and boy howdy, aren't they painting the canvas to make everyone so frightened you end up having to put your undies on the cold wash SOAK program to get the skid marks out before doing the regular cycle, right? And before anyone wants to take a hit on me for not knowing what I'm talking about, being long gone from NH---on that day? The husband of a very close cousin of mine was near the WTC, and another in the Pentagon. So yeah, I came home from work, it being afternoon here, and for no reason at all turned on the teevee, which I usually do not do, and thought: WTF stupid horror film is THIS? It took minutes to realise it was real. And it took hours to get through trans-atlantic per telephone and ascertain that MY family was ok, and they were---how fucking selfish.

No, this is not yet another my-god-how-horrible-it-was piece. Done to death. It's in our collective consciousness.

But life is sorta perverse, as we all know. I happened to be working at the Olympic Village in Munich in 1972. In the cafeteria where the athletes ate. 1400 university students from all over the world. That hit was the granddaddy of terrorism, if not so 'grandiös' and massivly deadly. In that whole clusterfuck I ended up standing on a balcony watching nice, engaging people being herded, tied up like cattle, into helicopters by masked men, and later heard them being blown up via the radio at work. It was a long time ago, we didn't have instant teevee and helicopters filming, AND NO. I would NOT have wanted to have seen it, looking back. What I saw was ENOUGH, thenk you... It wasn't like it was a choice or something. Which is the point of this. You don't get asked.

I'd seen them all summer. They engaged people in the most wonderful dialogues , and were exceptional.

I've probably never gotten over it, not really, but in my repressive stage, I wrote this about what went before, engaging and establishing dialogue with so many people from all over the world. Unlike so many people, who tend to be insular, when I first came here, I always wanted to be a good ambassador....

Sometimes I think I failed....

My first reaction, and it took me years to deal with, was 'Change'. It dealt with the Other part of that wonderful summer and the hope. Which got crushed.



You could be anywhere, and get blown up. There were terrorists being looked for where I worked when I first came here to Austria for good. I missed a bomb at a train station in Italy once. By one day. AND a devastating earthquake in the south of that country. But you go on, hey. And you know what? You just have to fucking DEAL with it. You don't need the gubmint to make the rules. And it never occurred to me to be SCARED all the time. Y'all have something that USED to be called a Constitution. Gonna sit on your ass and be 'skeered'? Well be my guest. Am not gonna join you on the bench in the waiting room, hey.


So this is about the good stuff, and the anger I felt that the world wasn't what I wanted it to be when I was 23 years old and naive: And the saddest part? It was more than thirty-five years ago, and not much changed. Depressing. The stick pins referred to were lapel buttons, and were something everyone was eager to collect...

"What reverence is rightly paid to a Divinity so odd
He lets the Adam whom he made perform the acts of God?"
W. H. Auden (Friday's Child)

AND EVERYONE CRYING 'CHANGE!'



In the narrow corridor

Between Forum and Chapel

The atheletes are milling about.

It's an open Bazaar

Where the West meets the East.

(or is it perhaps

a miniature Big Apple??)

The reporters write for the evening news,

That here is a love feast

Where humanity is spoken

But to me it is Babel:

And behind their smiles

I see thirty-two tooth salutes of contempt..

They trade national tokens

When their training is over

And the August sun is on the wane.

And everyone's crying 'Change!



Some of their stick-pins are, of course

More in demand---

Depending on reknown and supply-

(For who wants a Poland

When one can acquire

A token of Russia---

or Japan, by and by?)

The Olympic ideal does not exclude

the desire for personal prestige and fame.

And so here the capitalist ethic reigns,

And everyone's crying 'Change!'



Most stay in their groups;

They're like gaggles of geese

And they casually size up their opponents.

The Belgians won't speak with the Germans,

And the French look down with noblesse oblige

On the rest of this city's components.

And the Indians are wary of the Pakistanis.

The Nigerians hate the Rhodesians....

Still, they are anxious to trade

So they swallow

Their pride and political allegiance.

The friendliest are from the smallest countries;

From barely visible dots on the atlas.

They compete with the best and have no face to lose.

And their names tie the tongue, are exceedingly strange...

And EVERYONE'S crying 'Change!'



And we watch them, amused....

We foreign 'guest workers'

Try not to compete, but try

To understand what we're all about,

To conquer the predjudices

Our leaders have taught us

And try to discover their lies.



(We find sinister reasons for political deeds.

Can most of them be really due

To something so mundane as greed?)

We grow national guilts for the actions of others,

Attempt to solve problems,

And the grounds our talks cover

Range from politics to jokes,

to religion and pollution.....

And we can only agree that our world is insane.

And everyone's crying 'Change'



CHANGE cry disillusioned Americans

as George Meany offers millions to dump George McGovern.



Change! cry the Irish

who are weary of blood-shed, still demand to be self-governed.



Change! cry Rhodesia's majority blacks,

while their whites promenade and acknowledge no guilt.



Change! cry the Greeks

who have lost their Democracy,

and blame the American military bloc.



Change! cry the people of the Middle East

While the world sits in judgement

To the ticking of a nuclear clock.



Change! cry the people trapped in the suburbs,

in anonymous houses, sleazily built.



Change! cry defenders of the Earth's environment,

while in factory accidents, their neighbors are killed.



Change! cry the starving and the world's minorities,

who live on hate, while others grow fat.



Change! cry the young, as they champ at the bit,

while the Establishment sees they're held back.



Change! cry the conservatives who want power and control,

and tremble at thought of a reverse in the order of things.



Change! cry the liberals who shout out for justice

So all have a chance to grasp the brass ring.

Yes!, they shout, Change!



On the day of departure

the action is frenzied,

and the shouting reaches fever pitch,

trading sneakers and track suits,

And their laughter and smiles

no longer seem stretched,

are real, and their owners fit.

Competition is over,

and now they are grinning,

no longer concerned

with who will be winning.

Koreans wear Russian warm-up pants;

Belgians wear French warm-up jackets.



We smile and fight down the urge to gloat,

For we long know what they're finding out,

Have the experience and memories to back it.



The September wind blows yesterday's news

Through the passage-way. Then it rains.

And the athletes take refuge in the Chapel's pews

To a dying last echo of 'Change'



Change! For the world is shrinking fast,

On yourself you can no longer rely.



Change! And drop tribal habits at last....

Or like the dinasaurs.... We WILL die...







Manchester, 1974


Goodness---once upon a time, I was so damned naive.... I didn't really have to change anything content-wise in this one, btw. Isn't that sad....