'Lighter Than a Hummingbird's Feather'

Czesław Miłosz wrote “In Warsaw” in 1945, shortly after the end of World War II: “I did not want to love so. That was not my design. I did not want to pity so. That was not my design. My pen is lighter Than a hummingbird's feather. This burden Is too much for it to bear. How can I live in this country Where the foot knocks against The unburied bones of kin?” Few Americans have earned the right to speak so intimately and with such authority of war and its impact on writers and others. Most of us know war from newspapers and books. Boys enjoy playing Army. I remember visiting Gettysburg for the first time with my family when I was ten. My brother and I ran around as though the battlefield were a theme park or “interactive” museum. I’m certain we gave no thought to the 51,000 American casualties suffered in three days in 1863. Not long ago I read a poem about an atrocity in Latin America written by an American: pure propaganda, composed at a safe distance. Political posturing. A poet who…