INNOCENCE ISN’T ENOUGH

by Matthew King

Congresswoman Cori Bush delivered a speech on the House floor urging Missouri Governor Mike Parson to halt the execution of Marcellus Williams (above)… set to die by injection for the 1998 stabbing death of Felicia Gayle… “Taking the life of Marcellus Williams would be an unequivocal statement that when a white woman is killed, a Black man must die. And any Black man will do,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson wrote. —KMOV, September 20, 2024

The innocent have got off far too long.
We’ll make them pay for what they haven’t done.
The stakes are life and death, not right and wrong.
Are you surprised? We’ve said it all along,
this slogan on which we have always run:
the innocent have got off far too long.
A war is on! Which side do you belong
to? If it’s ours, then shun all whom we shun:
the stakes are life and death, not right and wrong.
Or do you see yourself among the throng
that’s gathered there to shout he’s not the one?
Mistakes? It’s life and death, not right and wrong.
The swans will have to sing another song.
They say we’ve gone too far? We’ve just begun.
The innocent have got off far too long.
Above all else the law must show it’s strong
and if you’re stunned we mean to more than stun
the innocent—they’ve got off far too long.
The stakes are life and death, not right and wrong.

Author's note: Marcellus Williams, at the time of writing, is scheduled to be executed by the state of Missouri on Tuesday, September 24, for a crime of which he is now clearly not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but of which his actual guilt or innocence may be beside the point under US law. St. Louis prosecutors have been trying to get his conviction overturned. But as a lawyer for the state of Arizona argued before the US Supreme Court in 2021, in a case which may be decisive for Marcellus Williams's, "innocence isn't enough.”

Matthew King used to teach philosophy at York University in Toronto; he now lives in what Al Purdy called "the country north of Belleville,” where he tries to grow things, counts birds, takes pictures of flowers with bugs on them, and walks a rope bridge between the neighbouring mountaintops of philosophy and poetry.

ON THE ARREST OF A DOMESTIC ROCK DOVE

by Matthew King

A pigeon that was captured eight months back near a port after being suspected to be a Chinese spy, is released at a vet hospital in Mumbai, India, Tuesday, Jan.30, 2024. Police had found two rings tied to its legs, carrying words that looked like Chinese. Police suspected it was involved in espionage and took it in. Eventually, it turned out the pigeon was an open-water racing bird from Taiwan that had escaped and made its way to India. With police permission, the bird was transferred to the Bombay Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, whose doctors set it free on Tuesday. (Anshuman Poyrekar/Hindustan Times via AP via ABC News, February 1, 2024) 

It’s said, when Noah’s ark had run aground

but water stretched far as the human eye

could see, he sent a dove out as a spy.

Her first sortie betrayed for miles around

no evidence of anything undrowned,

but with another week for things to dry,

and Earth to soak in hues of sun and sky,

she brought a sprig of leafy green she found.

The world may end, depending on a word.

We all know, if not why, a dove is meant

to signal peace, so let’s rename the bird

and think, if we would like, it might be sent

to fight for land or money or religion:

that’s no dove, it’s just a dirty pigeon.

Author's note: A Taiwanese racing pigeon, which had been detained in India for eight months on suspicion of being a Chinese spy, was released last week. (In 2020 Indian authorities arrested a suspected Pakistani spy pigeon.) "Pigeon" is another name for domesticated rock doves, and the idea of a spying dove, for me, recalls the bird Noah sent from the ark to see if there was anything alive in the world. The image of the dove returning with an olive branch is of course a widely recognized peace symbol, used for instance in the logo of the annual UN-sponsored International Day of Peace. In light of so much going on in the world, including struggles over naming things and what follows from our naming of them, it is darkly fitting that a dove by another name would be mistaken for a hostile agent.

Matthew King used to teach philosophy at York University in Toronto, Canada; he now lives in what Al Purdy called "the country north of Belleville", where he tries to grow things, counts birds, takes pictures of flowers with bugs on them, and walks a rope bridge between the neighbouring mountaintops of philosophy and poetry.

MY CAT AND I HAVE A CONVERSATION ABOUT TALKING WITH WHALES

by Matthew King

So now, I tell my cat, we talk with whales.
He yawns in pointed answer: it’s beneath
his dignity to suffer such tall tales.
His rough tongue flashes out across his teeth.
I ask him, well, should we use cats instead
to study alien communication?
Look, he says, you say what’s in my head
without the need for my participation.
You’re doing it right now! I haven’t said
a word, it’s all you, even this frustration!
Good luck, whales and Martians! Me, I’m fed
up with one-sided human conversation.
Oh, I tease him, don’t trust my translation?
Wait until you hear me speak cetacean.

Author's note: Some scientists believe they have successfully conducted a conversation with a humpback whale, and that this is good practice for communicating with aliens. My cat is skeptical.

Matthew King used to teach philosophy at York University in Toronto, Canada; he now lives in what Al Purdy called "the country north of Belleville" where he tries to grow things, counts birds, takes pictures of flowers with bugs on them, and walks a rope bridge between the neighbouring mountaintops of philosophy and poetry. His photos and links to his poems can be found at birdsandbeesandblooms.com.

POETRY IS DEAD

by Matthew King

It’s dead like God is, but the devil's in

the details of the mortal metaphor:

if death’s the wages, how did poets sin?

Does blood not soak their pages anymore?

Have poets found they’re lacking souls to pour

out? Some would say their skin has got too thin.

But here’s a piece of parabolic lore

to ponder, even if you’ve ears of tin:

God, having inspiration to dispose

of, shares it with some workshoppers of verse.

It makes him wish we all had stuck to prose.

He hitches back to heaven in a hearse,

and takes the sound advice his peers propose:

he sits down on a cloud to decompose.

Author's note: The New York Times published a piece arguing that poetry is dead. It provoked a lively response.

Matthew King used to teach philosophy at York University in Toronto; he now lives in what Al Purdy called "the country north of Belleville", where he tries to grow things, counts birds, takes pictures of flowers with bugs on them, and walks a rope bridge between the neighbouring mountaintops of philosophy and poetry.