peterelsworth

3 Elegy for the Woodstock Generation

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We were innocent,

I’ll give us that, if nothing else;

we did not even consider

those dark forces could emerge

from the shadowy pages of history

to plague us yet again, and so soon,

with chaos, suffering and horror

beyond measure or belief.

 

But why so naive?

Surely the killing fields and factories

of that bloody century of our birth

should have seasoned our innocence with doubt.

 

It could not happen again, let alone here,

relegated surely to the classroom of history,

lessons learned

to explain the unforgivable

to forgive the unexplainable.

 

Now the belief in progress

is rendered a bitter joke,

the liberal theory of history

fodder for the ivory tower,

as relevant as the sound of jackboots tramping

past outside at three o’clock in the morning.

 

Now yet again the threat of pain and suffering

enthusiastically inflicted in the name of another idea

made incarnate in demonic logic and language,

whose distortion of basic human decency

gives authority and license,

pride and purpose,

to both the bully and the craven

cringing behind the swagger of uniformed anonymity.

 

Yes, it was a time, and there was hope,

a callow hope, perhaps, a dream,

but that is the privilege of youth.

We thought it would last forever,

that the turns of history would not apply to us.

 

But three days of peace and music, after all,

were just that, three days, certainly not forever

despite vainglorious hopes and dreams.

 

Now we must face the angry, inward gaze,

the petulant sneer, the interminable speeches

empty of sense and noble inspiration,

bloated instead with self-absorbed paranoia,

snarling slurs of grievance and revenge,

junkyard dog whistles fomenting evil,

unleashing hatred and brutish violence.

 

Yes, power does tend to corrupt,

and great men are nearly always bad men,

but must we always forget the past,

always be doomed to the treadmill of history?

 

Well, some of us do remember the lessons

we studied full threadbare in our youth,

and, not blinded by privilege of one kind or another,

cannot go along with party lines that make no sense

beyond the wanton coupling of ignorance and power?

 

Listen!

Is that the creaking, shrieking turn of history,

the shucking off of the past to make way for the future?

Yes, and whose turn now to be the roadkill of history?

We were the innocent dreamers.

No more.

PCT Elsworth

2024