Burying Caesar in Chicago

Burying Caesar in Chicago

by Lew Rosenbaum

“I have come to bury Caesar

Julius Caesar

Not to praise him.”

So spoke Mark Antony

At the great man’s funeral,

And then proceeded to extol

Caesar’s virtues for the remainder of his monologue,

Until he roused the Roman masses

To avenge Caesar’s murder.

Antony ignored the rebellion

Brewing near Galilee.

He could not speak yet of the crucifixion,

Still a half century to come,

Of a poor carpenter, a fisher of men.

Now it’s the day after the Ides of March

I HAVE come to bury Caesar.

Really.

Caesar, upon his death,

Bequeathed to each Roman citizen

The sum of seventy-five drachmas.

Our Caesar, fearing the anger of

Chicago workers, dangled a carrot,

A minimum wage raise to thirteen dollars

Per hour in four years.

In FOUR YEARS!

Oh yes. I have come to BURY Caesar.

Our gentle Caesar,

In his penetrating recognition

Of our anxieties,

Pledged to improve our mental health services. . .

By closing half the Chicago clinics.

At the disarray in the public schools,

He wept tears of pure gold

That ran rivulets into the pockets of

His honorable charter school cronies.

Then he crossed the Rubicon,

Embarked on a forced march to

Shutter more than fifty schools.

I tell you

I have come to bury our honorable Caesar.

Had Brutus and Cassius, both honorable men,

Stabbed their Caesar on the South Side of Chicago,

His murder might have been averted,

Or so some Romans say, lamenting his fate.

I say not so, for Chicago’s Caesar

Stood fast opposing a trauma center

Which might have staunched the flow

From those unkindest cuts of all.

I come to bury Caesar,

Not to praise him.

Nor will I lend my ears

To those who sycophate at his feet,

Paint pictures that can never

Obliterate the blood he has let.

I come to bury Caesar.

I come to elect Jésus.

Two Poems on Dread, Dark Times and Trees: Adrienne Rich and Bertolt Brecht

Yesterday, March 8, was International Working Women’s Day.  At the Royal Soul’s open mic, to commemorate this, I read the following poem by Adrienne Rich.  I introduced the poem by describing the recent appearance in which four motions presented by Reverend Pinkney were denied by a kangaroo court.  It echoed, for me, the idea of “our country moving closer to its own truth and dread/its own ways of making people disappear.”  (Click the link to read the poem on the Poetry Foundation site, and to hear a recording of Adrienne Rich reading it)

What Kind of Times Are These

By Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich

There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill

and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows

near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted

who disappeared into those shadows.

I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled

this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,

our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,

its own ways of making people disappear.

I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods

meeting the unmarked strip of light—

ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:

I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you

anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these

to have you listen at all, it’s necessary

to talk about trees.

“What Kind of Times Are These”. © 2002, 1995 by Adrienne Rich, from The Fact of a Doorframe: Selected Poems 1950-2001 by Adrienne Rich. Used by permission of the author and W.W. Norton, Inc.

Source: Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995 (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1995)

Then, when others echoed the theme of trees, and added dark and light into the mix, I read this by Bertolt Brecht.  The context for this is the verse from another poem that goes:

In the dark times

Will there also be singing?

Yes, there will also be singing.

About the dark times.

To Posterity

Bertolt Brecht

1.

Indeed I live in the dark ages!
A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
A hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.

Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
And he who walks calmly across the street,
Is he not out of reach of his friends
In trouble?

It is true: I earn my living
But, believe me, it is only an accident.
Nothing that I do entitles me to eat my fill.
By chance I was spared. (If my luck leaves me
I am lost.)

They tell me: eat and drink. Be glad you have it!
But how can I eat and drink
When my food is snatched from the hungry
And my glass of water belongs to the thirsty?
And yet I eat and drink.

I would gladly be wise.
The old books tell us what wisdom is:
Avoid the strife of the world
Live out your little time
Fearing no one
Using no violence
Returning good for evil —
Not fulfillment of desire but forgetfulness
Passes for wisdom.
I can do none of this:
Indeed I live in the dark ages!

2.

I came to the cities in a time of disorder
When hunger ruled.
I came among men in a time of uprising
And I revolted with them.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

I ate my food between massacres.
The shadow of murder lay upon my sleep.
And when I loved, I loved with indifference.
I looked upon nature with impatience.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

In my time streets led to the quicksand.
Speech betrayed me to the slaughterer.
There was little I could do. But without me
The rulers would have been more secure. This was my hope.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

3.

You, who shall emerge from the flood
In which we are sinking,
Think —
When you speak of our weaknesses,
Also of the dark time
That brought them forth.

For we went,changing our country more often than our shoes.
In the class war, despairing
When there was only injustice and no resistance.

For we knew only too well:
Even the hatred of squalor
Makes the brow grow stern.
Even anger against injustice
Makes the voice grow harsh. Alas, we
Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness
Could not ourselves be kind.

But you, when at last it comes to pass
That man can help his fellow man,
Do no judge us
Too harshly.

translated by H. R. Hays  (click the link to read on the Poem Hunter site)

Bertolt Brecht