It's finally happened! I bought a smartphone, and no, it's not an iPhone. It took the near complete collapse of my derelict Razr to precipitate carrying out a decision I thought I made last December. But the decision's already vindicated itself. At dinner with some friends, someone told how the service on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 at St. Mark's in the Bowery involved a reading of a poem much read ten years ago, but resonant today in whole new and disturbing ways. It's "
September 1, 1939" by W. H. Auden - a parishioner of St. Mark's when he was in New York, incidentally - and by the time she was trying to remember
all schoolchildren learn, / Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return, and
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
I had the poem on my smartphone to put in her hand.
