Moral Intelligence.

Ritterbusch, Dale E.

 Moral Intelligence
    Today I woke to a film clip,
   two marines in Iraq with a puppy.
   One of them tosses the puppy over a cliff
   and they laugh.
   Years ago some teenagers crawled over
   a fence at the zoo, cut the beaks
   from storks and pelicans with a hacksaw.
   The birds could not eat and had to be destroyed.
   I don't know how ugly one has to be
   to do this, what religion, which parent,
   teacher or God is responsible. And now
   you want this sermon to stop.
   Perhaps I should bring into play
   the architecture of our great cities,
   a museum holding our dearest possessions,
   the wealth and beauty of our civilization.
   When a suicide bomber blows up
   a crowd of women and children shopping
   for textiles of the most brilliant reds and blues,
   for colorful vegetables and fruit--orange,
   green, a sunburst yellow--
   all that we see is blood patterned
   on the street, if we see anything at all.
   There is no beauty, no genius that makes this
   ugliness a just compensation, that suffers
   such contrast we amaze ourselves
   at our capacity for good, for
   making a wondrous beauty
   displayed in the torture museums of our minds
   Is this a tad too melodramatic?
   I thought I heard someone suggest this
   under her breath. Yet imagine (as I've witnessed)
   walking down a street in a major European
   city, shoppers stopping, admiring a window
   display--Louis Vuitton luggage,
   a manikin dressed in fur. Walking on
   not one of them stops or even glances at the photos
   of the lost, captured before their executions,
   museum hours posted near the entrance
   but no one enters, no one notes the hours.
   Your resentment will rise if I note
   those who walk past Dachau and admire
   the flowing fields of daffodils outside the gates.
   Yet perhaps there are exceptions:
   a woman born in a refugee camp in Thailand
   returns to the killing fields as a young adult,
   reconnecting her past, her family lost. Photos
   from the year zero are neatly, meticulously, recorded.
   She learns everything that's been withheld.
   We should note her demeanor, the expression on her face,
   how she refuses to eat a meal prepared by an older woman,
   face-worn, checkered scarf around her neck, former
   cadre of the Khmer Rouge, defender of their faith,
   one of many who still celebrate independence, April 17th
   The young woman remembers stories
   of mothers who went blind witnessing
   the small bodies of their babies bashed against trees.
   Separate, alone, this one young woman who refuses to eat
   amidst this gluttony of loss
   a celebration, or a sympathetic blindness, for us all. 

A contributing editor to WLA, DALE RITTERBUSCH is the author of two collections of poetry, Lessons Learned and Far From the Temple of Heaven.