Poetry and War

Poets must be experts at remembering, but also at forgetting. But while remembering seems to be an infinitely complex web of construction and forgetting appears to be a simple act, things are not what they seem. Forgetting is much more complicated than remembering, just as thinking is always easier than non-thinking. Remembering has its own momentum and moves like a stone rolling down a hill. Forgetting requires the immeasurably difficult act of stopping the stone of remembering with mental power. The stone is most obviously visible in the ferocious momentum of war. The desire to go to war is a habit of history whose source is our inability to forget. Yet we are surprised each time a generation seems almost glad to go war. But the warriors are just remembering, and unavoidably being run over by the stone.