Reflections of Darkness (II)

It is a sunny day in 1957, Helmut Gunther invited my father,
an army private of 19 to his home for dinner
Upon first impression, Helmut’s life was the model
of 1950s suburban Americana
Beautiful wife, house, two kids and white picket fence
Helmut Gunther, picture of the post-war experience
Helmut Gunther, proud former member of the Waffen S.S.
Nice, safe ex-Nazi
How does a teenage mind conceive such contradictions?
The good man he met, versus the evil he committed
Decades later, as Alzheimer’s slowly steals other memories
My father remembers with distinct clarity the disconnect
What the author Hannah Arendt called
“the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil”
Only last year, a man my age whose name I will never know
Woke up in the morning, ate a bowl of cereal
washed his clothes for the last time
He listens to music
In this moment he and I are not so different
We both go to the window
Remember times when things seemed different
Before mortar shells and gun blasts
Stole our childhood
Both wish we were faster than bullets
But where I pulled away from my faith
He went headlong inward
Never made it back out
Homemade dynamite strapped to his stomach
A rational response to the years of horror clawing at his heart
The next life promising something better
I ate cheese
Watched on the news when you took twenty people with you
When I go, I’m only taking memories
Maybe some cheese
These stories are not unique
We turned our heads on Darfur and Wounded Knee
Forgot Japanese internment
Feigned shock at Abu Grahib and Guantanamo
We have already done the same
to Haiti, to BP, to LaVena Johnson
I guarantee we will do the same to Troy Davis
The list will only get longer
Selective memory is an opiate
Collective attention span only as long
as the next cable news cycle
The half-life of each atrocity getting shorter
as it ticks away at the bottom of the screen
And it is so easy to assign blame
Demonize faceless men so we can delude the one in the mirror
Religion has taught us that the solution is to deny, repress
Deny, repress
So easy to lie to ourselves
Darkness is ordinary
It is everyday
A neighbor inviting an army private to dinner
A boy in a small Middle-Eastern village,
or small town America
Is me
At the window
Thinking of bullets
Fists clenched
Eyes squeezed shut
Holding