A Moment Of Transition
In all lives
where great character
is attained...
comes a moment
requiring
exceptional transition.
Sometimes
historically to achieve
something revolutionary...
profoundly better
something imminently bad
must transpire first.
Not to recognize
the necessity
effort required...
to alleviate
inhuman pain
is an inherent evil.
Not to recognize
the personal necessity;
required to alleviate...
inhuman catastrophic pain;
when possible is to exhibit
callous inhuman indifference.
Not to individually make
a stand for our fellow man;
during times exhibiting...
evil in excessive transition;
is the most destructive tragedy
inditing the entire human race.
Not to recognize
the personal necessity;
necessary in submitting to risk...
this enacting pain of transition;
sacrifice which must be taken
is the most destructive tragedy of all.
Copyright © Terence George Craddock
See also Stone Cross Prologue, Stone Cross, A Moral Civilized World, Peaked Cap; Skull-And-Crossbones Badge, Dagmar Topf: A Defence Of Family Furnaces and Struck Down With A Thunderbolt.
The topic of this poem addresses inhuman regimes such as Nazi Germany and the moral obligation of free governments and individuals to resist them. Herman Göring, ordered SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, to begin The Final Solution on July 31 1941. Heydrich organizes The Wannsee Conference, for January 20 1942, the date generally agreed upon as the start of the Holocaust.
The exhibited ‘callous inhuman indifference’ mentioned, can perhaps best be understood with reference to a quotation from George Orwell, reflecting on the coming of World War II. Orwell said “When one thinks of the lies and betrayals of those years, the cynical abandonment of one ally after another, the imbecile optimism of the Tory press, the flat refusal to believe that dictators meant war, even when they shouted it from house tops, the inability of the moneyed class to see anything wrong whatever in concentration camps, ghettoes, massacres, and undeclared wars, one is driven to feel that moral decadence played its part as well as mere stupidity.”
poem by Terence George Craddock
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
