Wisconsin poet Thomas R. Smith reads his poem "Contempt."

Poem is from from “Rooster Crows at Light from the Bombing: Echoes from the Gulf War,” published by Inroads Press.

Transcript:

We don't understand our grandparents'
satisfaction in not being famous--the hours spent
practicing the piano because one longed
to hear Chopin, the prairie light so calm
on weathered boards of the shed.

The scripture pages the old ones ponder
as death approaches are a walled garden
no longer noticed by the television watchers
admiring ingenious explosions
in the dawn sky over Mesopotamia.

What does it mean that we are bombing
the Garden? Contempt for simple
aspirations, for ordinary and peaceful
needs, shrieking down from dark cockpits
as the passive nation looks on.

Unable to play an instrument or dance,
we bomb the Baghdad of our human joy.
In the four-gated city, our grandfathers
and grandmothers become the children
Christ asked to "come unto Him."