Scott Watson and Leo Tolstoy: Good and Evil

I'm a correspondent of fellow poet John Bennett, whose email distro list I'm on. Likewise, for another email correspondent and fellow poet, Scott Watson. In both cases, these two poets have an unblinking dedication to truth as they see it. It has been an honor to publish the work of both poets previously, in print (Lilliput Review) and online (here at the Hut).

A little while back, two emails arrived in my box, one right after the other, Scott's first and then John's. First, I read Scott's powerful, devastating poem, IN PREPARATION FOR LOOKING AT AN A-BOMB. The poem, parenthetically, asks two very specific questions.

In his email, John passed along a quotation from Leo Tolstoy (On Good and Evil), which he saw a couple of weeks back (at the time he sent me the email, it was a day or two before) on the Writer's Almanac. In the quote, Tolstoy asks and, in a very real sense, answers, Scott's more specific questions. 

I hasten to add that, in my mind, Scott's parenthetical questions were, in fact, rhetorical, Scott's sentiment being very similar to Tolstoy's own, all of which may be gleaned in his poem, if by implication.

Or it least my feeble brain made the segue. This may be a case of the reader, myself, being way off base. Be that as it may, I want to thank both folks for permission to reprint. See what you think when what they sent, poem and quotation, rub up, one against the other.

IN PREPARATION FOR LOOKING AT AN A-BOMB

[Why was Hiroshima chosen?]

600 meters above

on a mountain's peak

a Buddha bone--or

tiny piece of one--is composed.

Innumerable scenes

are collected here.

[No flash photography]

Eternal Flame.

A sudden enlightenment

burns away

rational. Irrational too.

[Why was the A-bomb made?]

This life we are

given took eons to evolve:

incinerated blink

of an eye gazing

Namu Amida Butsu

Mercy, compassion--

  fire blowing winds

      prevail

          nothing can be done

and it rains

  back

      human myth

              reasons

skin drips off mama melting river flames.

I move with you

  through this exhibition

      seeing slowly

          as a lifelong

              teardrop

                  death

to know,

  touch, feel

          how this can be.

There must be something wrong with me

      that is me too

          wanting to

              forget.

Reduced to this.

Scott Watson

8/2014

Tolstoy on good and evil...

"...In 1854, Tolstoy was promoted and sent to the front to fight in the Crimean War. He was horrified by the violence of war, and in 1857, he witnessed a public execution in Paris, which affected him deeply as well. He wrote:

"During my stay in Paris, the sight of an execution revealed to me the instability of my superstitious belief in progress. When I saw the head part from the body and how they thumped separately into the box, I understood, not with my mind but with my whole being, that no theory of the reasonableness of our present progress could justify this deed; and that though everybody from the creation of the world had held it to be necessary, on whatever theory, I knew it to be unnecessary and bad; and therefore the arbiter of what is good and evil is not what people say and do, nor is it progress, but it is my heart and I."

~~~~~

not a devil
not a saint...
just a sea slug

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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