I have been researching an article about the poet Robert Lowell and war. In 1943 Lowell was one of the few Americans who opposed the firebombing of Germany. He made his views known to President Roosevelt in a letter, and then was imprisoned for his refusal to serve in the US armed forces. At the time, Lowell was a recently-converted Roman Catholic (he later drifted away from the church) and his condemnation of the policy of killing German non-combatants was part and parcel of his Christian faith.
I stumbled across an interview Lowell had with British writer Anthony Alvarez twenty years after his letter to the president. This was just as the US was beginning to ratchet up the bombing of North Vietnam:
Alvarez: What connection do you think there is between your present verse and your political situation – or your country’s?
Lowell: I’m very conscious of belonging to the country I do, which is a very powerful country and, if I have an image of it, it would be one taken from Melville’s Moby Dick: the fantical idealist who brings the world down in ruins through some sort of simplicity of mind. I believe that’s in our character and in my own personal character; I reflect that it’s a danger for us. It’s not all on the negative side, but there’s power there and energy and freshness and the possibility of ruin. I’m very aware of that.
Lowell knew instinctively that Vietnam would not be the last war for his country. Here is the heartbreaking stanza from his great poem about the nation: Waking Early Sunday Morning
Pity the planet, all joy gone
from this sweet volcanic cone;
peace to our children when they fall
in small war on the heels of small
war—until the end of time
to police the earth, a ghost
orbiting forever lost
in our monotonous sublime.
