Michael Longley’s poem speaks of ordinary folks — a Catholic green-grocer, a Methodist minister, an ice cream man, a cobbler, a butcher. Each one trying to make their way in the world. Respectful and courteous exchange appears to be necessary if people are to live together is some kind of harmony: “our cobbler mends shoes for EVERYBODY”. Oh yes, “the twenty-one flavors children have by heart” speaks to me about the variety of perspectives, tastes, personalities, beliefs of people in our society. But “all of these people, alive or dead, are civilized.” For me, I must move beyond civility to reverence. I must move beyond tolerance to curiosity, understanding, and compassion. I must connect and work with those who seek justice with love.
I love the image of community - as well as holes in the community created by violence - evoked by Michael Longley's poem. Last night, I had the opportunity to volunteer at a gala for my city's Refugee Support Services - the colorful sari, hijab & African prints a celebration of the rich diversity of our community -despite ICE raids and other anti-immigrant rhetoric. There were three speakers - one from Afghanistan & two from Ukraine - who told their journeys from their beautiful, broken homelands (often broken in part with American complicity) - ending their speeches with gratitude for the welcome they'd received in our community and the phrase: I am a refugee. I am your neighbor. May we continue to be neighbors despite the diabolical powers which seek to drive us apart.
Beautiful call to action in these dreadful times, where communities if faith, of businesses, of neighbors are coming together to stand up for civilization.
I nearly died with no warning at 31. One of the things I noticed in the messages I later saw posted on social media, sent to me directly while I was still unconscious and in later conversations, was the ways in which people defined it as unfair. I wasn’t a bad person, wasn’t old enough, had tiny children etc. It feels like there is a line somewhere we impose about deaths we can make sense of and detach from and those we deem unjust. It felt like others needed to be angry somewhere so that’s where they focused on. I didn’t and still don’t nearly 15 years later.
In the poem there’s a simple beauty in illustrating we are all part of an ecosystem regardless of the church we worship in or don’t, the items we get from different shops and the impact we have on each other. Civilised to me is basic human decency. I can’t mourn the death of some strangers and celebrate the death of others even if that would make trying to emotionally engage with the world right now much more ‘easy’.
There are people, including Charlie Kirk, who don't recognize civilization as a shared experience of humanity. "We" are civilized because of our religion/belief system, skin color, view of history. "You" are not because of your religion/belief system, skin color, view of history. I'm angry and having a hard time finding comfort in soft words about kinship. Really struggling these days but also hopeful.
A lovely, challenging poem. Where I stumble, am fully stopped cold, is with this word “civilised”. If civilised is a word for “those alive, once alive, and all our ancestors, then, yes, we are all civilised. Shall we then say that all of humanity is civilised? Yes, life is very complex, layered with paradox and sometimes, shocking, differences. And maybe, as we dig down into and through all these layers we may arrive at this: “the human heart beats within each of us, no matter our beliefs and opinions.” Recently, as a musician I composed a piece titled WTF Blues. After talking with a person I respect and admire I realized I needed to transform my anger, and so the title has become “A Touch of Tenderness”. This resonates for me, touches me, guides me, when I remember to be guided. Maybe this: “we each deserve a touch of tenderness.” Yet, even as I write this, what about those who say “humbug, I don’t want or need tenderness”? I don’t know, I just don’t know.
The poem is lovely but the word “civilized” also draws me up short. Too many of the world’s conflicts today are the legacy of powerful empires that felt utterly entitled to impose their definition of civilization on people they claimed were nothing more than ignorant savages. I prefer to remember what George Mitchell had to say about conflicts: “created by human beings—and human beings can solve them.” What happens if you change that noun in the second line: “the opposite of war is not so much peace as humanity?”
That substitution encourages a similar change to the adjectival form in the last line. “All of these people, alive or dead, are human.” But in the penultimate line, that switch might raise the same question that gives me pause about the privileged mindset of the “civilizing” colonizers. If we believe some people are not even human, are we saying it is acceptable to leave those barbaric "animals" out of the conversation? Or are we saying that those who are unable to perceive the universal traits of our humanity will be the ones who fail to benefit?
(With apologies to Longley for changing the spelling—my American fingers automatically reach for the Z, not the S, while typing.)
This poem brings me close to tears of joy. It feels like a love song to the truest beauty of humans, using tender details (“leeks, garlic, honey”)… It calls me/us to remember what makes us human, fellow humans.
This I found was the pull of the poem on me too: how elegantly Longley takes us from the big themes to the tiny — the leeks, the honey — and how fundamentally these “small things” are not at all but what we all share in our experience of being.
The line that stands out to me is "Who can bring peace to people who are not civilised?" We first need to see our shared humanity in the greengrocer and the ice-cream man before we can lay aside our desire to vanquish the other.
This is the line that stood out to me too, John. We forget how much power we hold in our own two hands and heart. And as Padraig put it so perfectly, "There’s no peace without addressing power, both among legislators and populations." We focus on the first but forget the last. How do we live reconciliation? Are we the hands and eyes and ears of love? It is much harder to do than it sounds but more important than ever.
Lovely poem that treads so lightly on its subject. I can’t help but wonder about what’s not said here, what these civilized people might be doing that is not described. One action need not define a person as either a collaborator or a resister. Sure, the butcher makes sausages, but what else are they doing?
I think Arendt is the thinker who best understood and best discussed this. She knew that evil is for everyday people as much as those in power, and she saw that the oppressors are only so powerful because of the complicity of some of the oppressed.
And, for me, that is the reckoning of reconciliation, the reckoning that each of us is responsible for: how have I resisted, how have I collaborated? I wonder how the people in the poem would answer.
Today, Sunday, I'm still grieving over the big far-right rally in London that even beforehand scared people of colour into staying indoors. I don't know what process of reconciliation can take place in this unequal, angry society, where the government won't call out racism. I just know we need something, urgently.
as i wrote in my response (somewhere in this stream) we had our own moment (here in Toronto, Canada) of far-right hate though it was small. Thankfully so. And the anti-fascist counter protestors outnumbered the anti-immigrant protestors by a factor of ten to one. It was almost comical (and the anti-fascist rally had better music, dancing, and senses of humour). Still the hate was the same we see in the news from the US and European countries and India and in so many places. And i think daily on the question you pose, "what process of reconciliation can take place in this unequal, angry society,..." I think this is a parallel and equally important question as that of: what process will halt the environmental destruction of our planet? It's all so deeply entwined.
In each one of the instances detailed within the poem we see an individual working towards the common good of all, not just their own faith, side of town, ethnicity or political beliefs.
A civilization for me is more than peace because peace is the opposite of war, the opposing swing of the pendulum. It’s more than individualism, competitive and often rigged on the basis that the overall pie cannot be enlarged.
It’s the focus on community that matters most of all. What can I do, what is my part in helping this group of people succeed through unity?
A requiem of ice cream flavors…what an unexpected way to consider a life taken too soon. I appreciate how the poet made sombre words that usually bring anticipation and pleasure.
“The choice before human beings, is not, as a rule, between good and evil but between two evils. You can let the Nazis rule the world: that is evil; or you can overthrow them by war, which is also evil. There is no other choice before you, and whichever you choose you will not come out with clean hands.”
Perhaps it is naïve of me, but I would still like to believe that the causes and conditions that create "the Nazis" (or any other group of people whose purpose is toward destruction of beings perceived to be disposable) in the first place can be worked on. But once "they" are in power and destroying others, I do agree with Orwell. All the more reason to build up civil community, in my mind.
Deeply disappointed this week Padraig, that your column chose to reflect on Charlie Kirk's death without acknowledging his deeply divisive and hateful legacy. The opposite of war, perhaps is civilization, or the movement to be more civilized. But that movement requires acknowledgments, the truth in truth and reconciliation. It is even more jarring to make that reflection along with 9/11.
Charlie Kirk did not deserve to be murdered, no one does. But to not acknowledge that he advocated for public executions and having children be made to watch, that he advocated for camps to "reeducate" people that didn't think like him, his white supremacy, his misogynistic views (including that women should be subservient to their spouses), his racism, his celebration of gun violence.
No he did not deserve to die at 31 from gun violence, no one does. But he also does not deserve to have his hate washed over.
I am not disappointed that Padraig called out the positive intent we all need to cultivate in these hateful times. But I agree with your eloquent description of Kirk's hateful Ness.
Michael Longley’s poem speaks of ordinary folks — a Catholic green-grocer, a Methodist minister, an ice cream man, a cobbler, a butcher. Each one trying to make their way in the world. Respectful and courteous exchange appears to be necessary if people are to live together is some kind of harmony: “our cobbler mends shoes for EVERYBODY”. Oh yes, “the twenty-one flavors children have by heart” speaks to me about the variety of perspectives, tastes, personalities, beliefs of people in our society. But “all of these people, alive or dead, are civilized.” For me, I must move beyond civility to reverence. I must move beyond tolerance to curiosity, understanding, and compassion. I must connect and work with those who seek justice with love.
I love the image of community - as well as holes in the community created by violence - evoked by Michael Longley's poem. Last night, I had the opportunity to volunteer at a gala for my city's Refugee Support Services - the colorful sari, hijab & African prints a celebration of the rich diversity of our community -despite ICE raids and other anti-immigrant rhetoric. There were three speakers - one from Afghanistan & two from Ukraine - who told their journeys from their beautiful, broken homelands (often broken in part with American complicity) - ending their speeches with gratitude for the welcome they'd received in our community and the phrase: I am a refugee. I am your neighbor. May we continue to be neighbors despite the diabolical powers which seek to drive us apart.
Beautiful call to action in these dreadful times, where communities if faith, of businesses, of neighbors are coming together to stand up for civilization.
"May we continue to be neighbors despite the diabolical powers which seek to drive us apart." XO
Someone waves me
Across an intersection
I wave my thanks
As I walk each Sunday
To get the Times
In our small bricked city
We have both points of view
Standing in market Square
With just signs
Bordered by a nuclear submarine base
And thriving oyster farms
Along the Piscataqua
In the live free or die state
I think how civilized
I’m feeling a little smug
And then I pass a woman
Huddled in a doorway in her blanket
With a cup for charity
And I think, yes, Mr. Longley,
Not at war
And she’s hungry
So, not civilized yet
Mary Anker
Wow!!!! "And she is hungry and so not civilized yet". So very very much to say to those 9 words. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing this. It expresses my thoughts about civilization as shalom for all (in my reply about Longley’s poem) with penetrating honesty.
I nearly died with no warning at 31. One of the things I noticed in the messages I later saw posted on social media, sent to me directly while I was still unconscious and in later conversations, was the ways in which people defined it as unfair. I wasn’t a bad person, wasn’t old enough, had tiny children etc. It feels like there is a line somewhere we impose about deaths we can make sense of and detach from and those we deem unjust. It felt like others needed to be angry somewhere so that’s where they focused on. I didn’t and still don’t nearly 15 years later.
In the poem there’s a simple beauty in illustrating we are all part of an ecosystem regardless of the church we worship in or don’t, the items we get from different shops and the impact we have on each other. Civilised to me is basic human decency. I can’t mourn the death of some strangers and celebrate the death of others even if that would make trying to emotionally engage with the world right now much more ‘easy’.
There are people, including Charlie Kirk, who don't recognize civilization as a shared experience of humanity. "We" are civilized because of our religion/belief system, skin color, view of history. "You" are not because of your religion/belief system, skin color, view of history. I'm angry and having a hard time finding comfort in soft words about kinship. Really struggling these days but also hopeful.
I'm struggling too. I don't even know where I sit with the happenings of this week. I have no clear position right now except sorrow.
Mine is fear. Sad to say it, but if I didn’t then dishonesty would be my “clear position.”
I thought before choosing sorrow or fear. It's both, really. But my fear keeps dissolving into sorrow.
A lovely, challenging poem. Where I stumble, am fully stopped cold, is with this word “civilised”. If civilised is a word for “those alive, once alive, and all our ancestors, then, yes, we are all civilised. Shall we then say that all of humanity is civilised? Yes, life is very complex, layered with paradox and sometimes, shocking, differences. And maybe, as we dig down into and through all these layers we may arrive at this: “the human heart beats within each of us, no matter our beliefs and opinions.” Recently, as a musician I composed a piece titled WTF Blues. After talking with a person I respect and admire I realized I needed to transform my anger, and so the title has become “A Touch of Tenderness”. This resonates for me, touches me, guides me, when I remember to be guided. Maybe this: “we each deserve a touch of tenderness.” Yet, even as I write this, what about those who say “humbug, I don’t want or need tenderness”? I don’t know, I just don’t know.
The poem is lovely but the word “civilized” also draws me up short. Too many of the world’s conflicts today are the legacy of powerful empires that felt utterly entitled to impose their definition of civilization on people they claimed were nothing more than ignorant savages. I prefer to remember what George Mitchell had to say about conflicts: “created by human beings—and human beings can solve them.” What happens if you change that noun in the second line: “the opposite of war is not so much peace as humanity?”
That substitution encourages a similar change to the adjectival form in the last line. “All of these people, alive or dead, are human.” But in the penultimate line, that switch might raise the same question that gives me pause about the privileged mindset of the “civilizing” colonizers. If we believe some people are not even human, are we saying it is acceptable to leave those barbaric "animals" out of the conversation? Or are we saying that those who are unable to perceive the universal traits of our humanity will be the ones who fail to benefit?
(With apologies to Longley for changing the spelling—my American fingers automatically reach for the Z, not the S, while typing.)
I appreciate your specifying the "civilzing" colonizers and your use of humanity.
You remind me of Yeats, in Circus Animals' Desertion:
"Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.". Clear minding almost.
☘️☘️
My recently written blues is "So Long Democracy Blues". Mine, unlike yours, has not evolved beyond anger and sarcasm. Maybe I'll get there.
This poem brings me close to tears of joy. It feels like a love song to the truest beauty of humans, using tender details (“leeks, garlic, honey”)… It calls me/us to remember what makes us human, fellow humans.
This I found was the pull of the poem on me too: how elegantly Longley takes us from the big themes to the tiny — the leeks, the honey — and how fundamentally these “small things” are not at all but what we all share in our experience of being.
Yes, this! That line moved me so much as well. Those small things matter.
The line that stands out to me is "Who can bring peace to people who are not civilised?" We first need to see our shared humanity in the greengrocer and the ice-cream man before we can lay aside our desire to vanquish the other.
This is the line that stood out to me too, John. We forget how much power we hold in our own two hands and heart. And as Padraig put it so perfectly, "There’s no peace without addressing power, both among legislators and populations." We focus on the first but forget the last. How do we live reconciliation? Are we the hands and eyes and ears of love? It is much harder to do than it sounds but more important than ever.
Lovely poem that treads so lightly on its subject. I can’t help but wonder about what’s not said here, what these civilized people might be doing that is not described. One action need not define a person as either a collaborator or a resister. Sure, the butcher makes sausages, but what else are they doing?
I think Arendt is the thinker who best understood and best discussed this. She knew that evil is for everyday people as much as those in power, and she saw that the oppressors are only so powerful because of the complicity of some of the oppressed.
And, for me, that is the reckoning of reconciliation, the reckoning that each of us is responsible for: how have I resisted, how have I collaborated? I wonder how the people in the poem would answer.
Today, Sunday, I'm still grieving over the big far-right rally in London that even beforehand scared people of colour into staying indoors. I don't know what process of reconciliation can take place in this unequal, angry society, where the government won't call out racism. I just know we need something, urgently.
I also. To see hate inflamed like this, an industrial weaponisation of it. When will we turn from this?
as i wrote in my response (somewhere in this stream) we had our own moment (here in Toronto, Canada) of far-right hate though it was small. Thankfully so. And the anti-fascist counter protestors outnumbered the anti-immigrant protestors by a factor of ten to one. It was almost comical (and the anti-fascist rally had better music, dancing, and senses of humour). Still the hate was the same we see in the news from the US and European countries and India and in so many places. And i think daily on the question you pose, "what process of reconciliation can take place in this unequal, angry society,..." I think this is a parallel and equally important question as that of: what process will halt the environmental destruction of our planet? It's all so deeply entwined.
In each one of the instances detailed within the poem we see an individual working towards the common good of all, not just their own faith, side of town, ethnicity or political beliefs.
A civilization for me is more than peace because peace is the opposite of war, the opposing swing of the pendulum. It’s more than individualism, competitive and often rigged on the basis that the overall pie cannot be enlarged.
It’s the focus on community that matters most of all. What can I do, what is my part in helping this group of people succeed through unity?
A requiem of ice cream flavors…what an unexpected way to consider a life taken too soon. I appreciate how the poet made sombre words that usually bring anticipation and pleasure.
“The choice before human beings, is not, as a rule, between good and evil but between two evils. You can let the Nazis rule the world: that is evil; or you can overthrow them by war, which is also evil. There is no other choice before you, and whichever you choose you will not come out with clean hands.”
— George Orwell (1903–1950)
Perhaps it is naïve of me, but I would still like to believe that the causes and conditions that create "the Nazis" (or any other group of people whose purpose is toward destruction of beings perceived to be disposable) in the first place can be worked on. But once "they" are in power and destroying others, I do agree with Orwell. All the more reason to build up civil community, in my mind.
To be civilized requires choice:
War is not civilized.
Murder is not civilized.
Nor terrorism.
As Primo Levi wrote (I paraphrase): between reaction and response there is a pause. This pause is a space where we can choose to be civilized.
During this High Holiday season-where life is suspended over one open book and one shut-I stand.
The peace of 1998 in Ireland is a lasting example of what might be possible around an uncivilized world today.
Michael Longley's poem is too.
Deeply disappointed this week Padraig, that your column chose to reflect on Charlie Kirk's death without acknowledging his deeply divisive and hateful legacy. The opposite of war, perhaps is civilization, or the movement to be more civilized. But that movement requires acknowledgments, the truth in truth and reconciliation. It is even more jarring to make that reflection along with 9/11.
Charlie Kirk did not deserve to be murdered, no one does. But to not acknowledge that he advocated for public executions and having children be made to watch, that he advocated for camps to "reeducate" people that didn't think like him, his white supremacy, his misogynistic views (including that women should be subservient to their spouses), his racism, his celebration of gun violence.
No he did not deserve to die at 31 from gun violence, no one does. But he also does not deserve to have his hate washed over.
I am not disappointed that Padraig called out the positive intent we all need to cultivate in these hateful times. But I agree with your eloquent description of Kirk's hateful Ness.
☘️☘️😢
It's a beautiful poem. But why is it assumed that the person who suggested civilization is a "he"?
Especially when evidence consistently indicates perpetrators of violent acts and violent rhetoric are male.
Can we give the gender-uberalis a rest, when thinking of peace and conflict in such moving terms? - a life long feminist.