Three Lessons

Cassandra, Iraq

C. K. Williams

1.

She's magnificent, as we imagine women must be
who foresee and foretell and are right and disdained.

This is the difference between we who are like her
in having been right and disdained, and we as we are.

Because we, in our foreseeings, our having been right,
are repulsive to ourselves, fat and immobile, like toads.

Not toads in the garden, who after all are what they are,
but toads in the tale of death in the desert of sludge.

2.

In this tale of lies, of treachery, of superfluous dead,
were there ever so many who were right and disdained?

With no notion of what to do next? If we were true seers,
as prescient as she, as frenzied, we'd know what to do next.

We'd twitter, as she did, like birds; we'd warble, we'd trill.
But what would it be really, to twitter, to warble, to trill?

Is it ee-ee-ee, like having a child? Is it uh-uh-uh, like a wound?
Or is it inside, like a blow, silent to everyone but yourself?

3.

Yes, inside, I remember, oh-oh-oh: it's where grief
is just about to be spoken, but all at once can't be: oh.

When you no longer can "think" of what things like lies,
like superfluous dead, so many, might mean: oh.

Cassandra will be abducted at the end of her tale, and die.
Even she can't predict how. Stabbed? Shot? Blown to bits?

Her abductor dies, too, though, in a gush of gore, in a net.
That we know; she foresaw that - in a gush of gore, in a net.

(From the April 3, 2006 issue of the New Yorker)



The day we went to war, March 20, 2003, was the day I also debuted on stage at my suburban high school. It was a night of mostly comedic one-act plays, all directed by students. I had been cast in "The Swimmer" in which I played a delusional man stuck at a bus stop because he believed that the surrounding concrete was a sea of water. I'm sure there is an allegory there, but I'll let you do the analysis.

Honestly, I cannot remember one line from that play, even though I was onstage for 45 minutes. The only thing I can recall is that at one point I got billy-clubbed (unintentionally for real), and that I clipped a "No War" button to my costume. In my cozy little high school cafetorium, right down the street from Dennis Hastert's office, I was 'that kid' who didn't support our troops, and was unconcerned with the safety of the American People (this was way back when the war was about WMD's). We closed our one night show with mixed reviews, most people confused that I died in the last scene with no closure.

Nearing four years later, we're pumping 20,000 more troops into Iraq. What do I think about it? I'm no General--My military experience extends as far as conquering the Aztecs in Age of Empires in the eighth grade. But you know what you get when you cross a Greek Prophet, contemporary suburban drama, and a real-time strategy video game? A kid who knows enough about this world to gather good information, portray it clearly and honestly, and that all the other civilizations hate it when the most powerful civilization moves their ballistas in and starts exploiting the resources of the subjugated Aztecs.