by Jeremy Nathan Marks
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Daniel Ellsberg, Whistleblower Who Exposed Top-Secret History of the Vietnam War, Dies at 92 —Slate, June 16, 2023. Photo: Dr. Daniel Ellsberg speaks to reporters Dec. 22, 2011, at Fort Meade, Maryland. PAUL J. RICHARDS/Getty Images via Slate. |
I believe that to be a proper critic
you need to lead a platoon through
the shit
and sit on every side
of the table
read the cables
from embassies and fire
bases
compose a dissertation
on aptly named Decision
Theory
then join a think tank that took
its name from something as light
as Research and Development.
Nor would it hurt to graduate
from Harvard
and possess an IQ north
of the notes a Stradivarius
hits in the hands of prodigious
digits that can clean an M1
beneath a blindfold
like Jim Brown’s men
aboard the U.S.S. Tigerfish
in one of those Cold War consensus
flicks.
Daniel had it all
Ooh Rah
entering the Corps
because he was no paper
lion but under General Lansdale
read every last word emitted by the Pentagon
and courted charges under the Espionage Act
from men who believed the original sin
of American freedom was journalism.
But before people say
he was just another Eastern
Establishment Jew like Kristol
Bell Glazer or Chomsky
bear in mind Harvard had quotas
and Daniel grew up in Detroit
the same city where Philip Levine
discovered Garcia Lorca
who spoke of what was inside
forgotten little animals
when he lived in Gotham
but that could have been Hanoi
Hue or the Iron Triangle where Annam
Chorus Frogs warned peasants by their silence
Daniel defoliated the pretensions
of National Security
and for interests of state
we cannot now forget to say
Requiescat in pace
or better yet
hold for him a Minyan.
Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in the Great Lakes Region of Canada. Recent work appears/will appear in Rattle, Terrain.org, Belt Magazine, and Poetica Review among other places.
