Our World of Wastelands

Our World of Wastelands - Written by Hannah Simpson

April is the cruelest month,

28th April. The president of the United States of America addressed a telegram to me.

Breeding lilacs out of the dead land,

“A great people have been moved to defend a great nation.”

Mixing memory and desire,

“Today our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature.”

Stirring,

Humanity... all my suffering has been at the hands of humanity.

Dull roots with spring rain,

We became the victim of a manmade disaster.

Winter kept us warm,

The public cares a lot about homes which are warm. We like to be comfortable.

Covering earth in forgetful snow,

The world has never offered us an easy living. There is no reason why it should.

Feeding a little life,

In the past we would not hesitate.

With dried tubers,

You cannot hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree itself.

Summer surprised us,

Summer. My 19th summer. The temperature is scalding hot today.

I must be wary every time I go outdoors.

Coming over the Starnbergersee,

The plane ride was like a dimension between worlds.

With a shower of rain,

All that speech pouring down.

The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing.

We stopped,

Without seeing the full picture, we will not solve this crisis.

In the colonnade,

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.

And went on,

“Since we last met there have been one or two\ changes to the political scene.”

In the sunlight,

That man over there says women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches.

Into the Hofgarten,

The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.

And,

I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people.

Drank coffee and talked for an hour,

We delivered on time. But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity is not something on which we can base our hopes for the future.

Bin Gar Kiene Russin,

Neither Russia, nor Germany, nor any other great power has the right to claim that it is waging a “war of defence.”

Stamm Aus lit Auen,

We are meeting at a critical moment.

Echt Deutsch,

If men wish to live, then they are forced to kill others.

And when we were children,

Children walking in the truth. To fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, every precious stone and on either side of the river. And on either side of the river was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits.

Staying at the archduke’s,

Where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

my cousin’s,

A meeting of minds. Our alliances were created to defend shared values.

He took me out on a sled,

The man in the arena.

And I was frightened,

The wind was so strong that I feared it would lift up my frail little body and carry me into the clouds.

He said,

“Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged,

Marie,”

“Marie,

They look to us to help them,

Hold on tight.”

The man in the arena. Who strives valiantly. Not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles. The strong man. The very essence of compassion, of duty, of style, of beauty. The man in the arena.

And down we went,

In the mountains,

In the midst and heat of the battle,

There ‘you feel free;

We must not be confused about what freedom is. Freedom of religion and worship; To live and die, amongst the true meaning of its creed.

I read,

“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king.

Much of the night,

In my paradise home, we would sit and learn and read together,

And go south in the winter,

What are the roots that clutch,

And what a heart must I have to contemplate,

What branches grow out of this stony rubbish?

Son of man,

No man can be a good citizen who is not a good husband and a good father, who is not honest in his dealings with other men and women, faithful to his friends and fearless in the presence of foes. But woe unto that man by whom the son of man is betrayed!

You cannot say,

We shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our island home.

Or guess,

To outlive the menace of tyranny,

For you know only,

That is what we are going to try to do.

A heap of broken images,

Blood, toil, tears and sweat.

Where the sun beats,

We shall never surrender.

And the dead tree gives no shelter,

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

The cricket,

What he told me before; I have it in my heart:

“No relief,

I am tired of fighting.

And the dry stone no sound of water,

The old men are all dead.

Only there is shadow under this red rock,

It is the young men who say yes or no.

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock)

He who led on the young men are dead.

And I will show you something different from either your shadow at morning striding behind you,

In the long history of the world.

Or your shadow at evening, rising to meet you;

From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.

I will show you fear in a handful of dust,

The little children are freezing to death.”

Frisch weht der Wind

(The wind is blowing fresh.)

Der Heimat Zu

(Towards the homeland.)

Mein Irisch Kind,

(My Irish child.)

Wo weilest du?

(Where are you staying?)

You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;

I am not afraid of being thought a sentimentalist.

They called me the hyacinth girl,

Who will stop to think about as small a thing as the mystery of a growing seed.

- Yet, when we came back late from the hyacinth garden,

Since then, it has developed, struggled, adapted itself to its surroundings.

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not speak,

First, because you have asked me to tell you something of myself, and I can’t do that without telling you some of the things I believe in so intensely.

And my eyes failed,

Because it is not often, I have the chance to talk to a thousand women.

I was neither living nor dead,

These things are the price we cheerfully undertook to pay for the high honour of standing alone, seven years ago, in defence of the liberty of the world.

And I knew nothing,

That is the great privilege belonging to our place in the world.

Looking into the heart of light,

My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are. Maybe I shall find them among the dead.

The silence,

My heart is sick and sad.

Oed und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris,

We must not be daunted by the anxieties and the hardships that the war has left behind for every nation.

Famous clairvoyant,

I am sure you will see our difficulties in the light that I see them.

Bibliography -

BARONESS NEVILLE-ROLFE. 2016. ‘Baroness Neville-Rolfe’s Speech at Policy Exchange’s Heat Summit’.

BURKE, Edmund. 1793. ‘On the Death of Marie Antoinette’.

BUSH, George. 2001. ‘Statement by the President in His Address to the Nation’.

CARSON, Rachel. 1954. ‘Exceeding Beauty of the Earth’.