UK Poet and Children’s Author, Michael Rosen (1946 -) This Picture taken in 2021 after the author survived Covid and wrote a new kids book!
Never Again
We say, “Never again.”
But
when people with power are pointing
in one direction
when many minds are pointing
in that direction
when the guns and bombs are pointing
in that direction
too,
it can happen again.
It does happen again.
It can be furious and chaotic.
It can be calm and orderly.
It can start with laws.
It can start without them.
The people who do it
can believe
they are saving their country.
The people who do it
can believe
that they are just getting
their own back.
That’s why
it can happen again.
It does happen again.
It has happened again.
Michael Rosen from On the Move – Home Is Where You Find It, Candlewick Books, 2020
After a trip to war-affected areas of Africa in 2006 I wrote a chapbook based on the stories from the places we had visited – Rwanda, DR Congo and Uganda. The closest I have come to war and war zones in my lifetime. A number of the places we visited have been overcome with armed violence a number of times since. My chapbook is called Again, No More.
I ache to think of the echo of my title with Michael Rosen’s title of his poem, Never Again, from his searing 2020 collection On the Move with its remarkable illustrations by the noted U.K. illustrator, Quentin Blake. And horribly, not the title of Michael’s poem but its last line is once again having the last word: It has happened again. And, of course, it has never stopped happening around the world but the sheer scale and effrontery of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has taken my breath away.
Today’s featured poem feels most attached emotionally for me to the war in Ukraine. But let us not forget the many awful and bloody armed conflicts around the world happening as we speak. Currently, including last year and this year, there are twenty-one significant on-going armed conflicts listed by the World Population Review. This list includes Afghanistan, Syria, Ethiopia, Yemen and the drug war in Mexico.
And from these conflicts so many displaced people, joined now by the almost one million Ukranians seeking refuge in other countries. This awful echo of the title of Michael’s book: On The Move.
Michael is no literary stranger in the UK and his books have been worldwide bestsellers. He was the Children’s Laureate in the UK between 2007 and 2009. Because of the history of his family displaced in WWII and many relatives killed in the Holocaust his books resonate with the themes of migration, displacement and war.
When I read Never Again during the past few days I loved its crisp and clean delivery, such a stark contrast to its messy and conflicted topics. In a sense, just the facts behind war. How chilling the matter-of-factness of this:
We say, “Never again.”
But
when people with power are pointing
in one direction
when many minds are pointing
in that direction
when the guns and bombs are pointing
in that direction
too,
it can happen again.
And as the poem cries out: over and over and over: It does happen again. It is happening in more than twenty countries around the world. And, now, in this dispassionate description, no judgement. Just the awful truth behind wars.
It does happen again.
It can be furious and chaotic.
It can be calm and orderly.
It can start with laws.
It can start without them.
The people who do it
can believe
they are saving their country.
The people who do it
can believe
that they are just getting
their own back.
Sound familiar? Take all the right and wrong and other passionate rhetoric and here it is. Why war happens again and again.
Perhaps the most disheartening words, for me, in Michael’s poem are saved for the last. Simply, horrible. In their simplicity and delivery. The not so child-like repletions in different ways of happen again. The bullet-like declarations of can, does and has.
That’s why
it can happen again.
It does happen again.
It has happened again.
My God, I wish it were not so. This does, has and is of war. My God. My God.