Wilmington, Delaware

Substitute today’s headlines for those of 70 years ago. Substitute Gaza for Madrid. Substitute drones for planes, carrying their deadly payload to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now, however, we and our allies are the aggressors. How many times have we heard the plaintive cries of those who want nothing more than to live their lives in peace and simple comfort surrounded by mudden walls as bombs fell first in Korea, then Vietnam, and Cambodia, and Laos, and El Salvador, and Guatemala, and Venezuela, and Iraq and Afghanistan. But now we not only make them but deliver them as well.

Wilmington, Delaware
--- Eugene V. Etler

And when it was over
And the planes had left
And all was quiet ---
The living and the dead ---
Life went on
Uninterrupted.

And those who fled for shelter
Embarked out into the sun
And they lifted their fists
And cursed
The flying planes.

For these were their mortal enemies
These fliers of destructive death.
The children they killed
The women and men
Their blood that washed
The walls of Madrid.

And the plaintive cry of a mother’s wail
The silent grief of a husband’s dead
The bewildered look of an orphaned child.
The whining snarl of a hungered dog ---
A chicken’s feather lost in the air.

Look to it citizens of Madrid
Reap your living
And mourn your dead.
You who survive ---
In order to survive ---
Must fight for your land ---
Sweep away your dead ---
And make room for the living.

Here a child --- Dead
Here a woman --- Dead
Here a soldier --- Dead
Here a citizen --- Dead
Bury them
In the soil to be
Planted as seeds of Democracy.

The planes are gone
And work’s to be done.
This is your work
No one to help you.
The world of civilization
Has turned its back.
This is your fight, it said,
We shall have nothing to do with it, it said.

Nothing at all, it said
Neutrality, it said
Non-intervention
Non-intervention
Non-intervention
Until its words screamed
Its blood message.

Let Spain fight its fight
And if Germany interferes
And Spain becomes Italy’s career
That’s their business ---
We wipe our hands
Of the whole affair.

That’s what the world has said to you.
Democracy is a pretty sounding word
And the world of civilization
Has claimed Democracy as its own
And the pretty sounding word
Has been translated now

Into

The living come the dead
God, but long live the dead.
Dead from the bombing
Of fascisms coming.
Dead from Democracy’s lie
Our Democracies led them to die.
Hold up their heads to the shame
Bodies made dead and maimed
Democracy’s new found fame.

This crime with fascism they must share
This bomb made --- where?
‘Tis true -----
Wilmington, Delaware.