S1 Ep7 War

S1 EP#7 WAR TMSP | Transcript

Martin Sheen: 

Hello and welcome to the Martin Sheen Podcast with yours truly, Martin Sheen, of course, and I’m delighted to be your host for this podcast pilgrimage where the destination is the journey itself. Along the way, I plan to share stories and personal memories of some of the many people, places and events that have helped to shape my lifelong happy and continuing struggle as an artist and a man to unite the will of the spirit with the work of the flesh. 

 

I also hope to explore poetry as a powerful form of expression and communication by proxy, as it were, and how poetry is such a vital and necessary component of our spirituality and our public discourse. And from time to time, I’ll invite friends, fellow actors, poets, scholars and family members to join our pilgrimage and, discuss what inspires their artistic journey. And so, friends, let us begin.

 

On March 19, 2003, the US government willfully and callously compromised our national integrity with the brutal invasion of Iraq, which stained American credibility and still remains a constant source of sorrow and regret. At the time, 21 years ago, our nation was hypnotized and galvanized by a very heightened sense of patriotism, fueled by an arrogant administration which led us to believe that our future was in imminent nuclear peril when nothing was further from the truth. In the days and weeks leading up to the invasion, I spoke out repeatedly against the war at a series of non violent protests, demonstrations, peace rallies and press conferences, all of which only served to isolate me further as a radical and being unpatriotic. On the evening of March 19, 2003, as I watched on TV the horror and unrelenting shock and awe bombardment of Baghdad, I wrote this poem called War is. 

 

War is what it Is. 

In order to prepare for war, you must not be sensitive or poetic or humorous. 

You must not be self effacing, sentimental or forgiving. 

You must not be tentative, compassionate or light hearted. 

On the contrary, in order to prepare for war, you must be clear, uncompromising and confident. 

You must look life square in the eye and choose death. 

 

The enormous tragedy of the Iraq War lingers in our nation’s collective consciousness, with perhaps the only positive result being an end to our indifference to the suffering of others, thanks in large part to our returning combat veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, which we thank for their service. Consider this. In 1986, I participated in a peace mission through war torn Central America. When I returned, I wrote this very brief four line poem called “Witness.” 

 

Jesus keeps a lonely vigil, 

costumed in the native lore.

There he weeps a pool residual 

Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. 

 

In this famous speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3. The brilliant, young and newly crowned King Henry rouses his ragtag troops against an overwhelming French army at the battle of Agincourt.

 

That he which hath no stomach to this fight,

Let him depart; his passport shall be made

And crowns for convoy put into his purse:

We would not die in that man’s company

That fears his fellowship to die with us.

This day is called the feast of Crispian:

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

He that shall live this day, and see old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,

And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.

And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’

Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,

But he’ll remember with advantages

What feats he did that day: then shall our names.

Familiar in his mouth as household words

Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,

Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,

Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.

This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remember’d;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

 

Consider this from the Prophet Isaiah, chapter 2, verse 4. They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. From the New Oxford Bible Standard edition. 

 

I’m going to take a brief pause here, but stick around. 

There’s more to come. And we’re back. Thanks for staying with us.

 

Often while driving along San Vicente Boulevard in Brentwood, California, I would see a smiling black man with a sign that read poems to go. And if I could manage the traffic, I would stop and buy one. The exchange was always brief, very friendly, and the cost was whatever one chose to give. I never knew the man’s name or his story until recently, when my son Ramon attended a memorial service for a homeless friend of his in Pasadena and shared with me the program from that service, which included a poem and brief biography of that very same man from Brentwood. His name was Wendell Brown, and his poem is entitled “Ballad of the Bushman.” 

 

Some clustered bushes shelter me in loneliness and misery. 

They shield me from the wind and cold and help me keep what hopes I hold. 

I gave my best for Uncle Sam and came back dead from Vietnam. 

When afterwards at home again just one among forgotten men. 

Such awful scenes of dead mankind. 

Blood soaked the regions of my mind. 

What do I seek and do not find? 

“But wait,” I say, “don’t pity me.” 

I have the mountains and the sea.

I’ve watched the cities sprawl and grow 

with people boxes row by row. 

I’ve seen men slaving lives away 

Pursuing money night and day 

My wants are few but this I found what peace is 

Mine comes from the ground 

God’s friendly bushes are my pad 

they give me what little ease I’ve had 

For now I live the life I’ve got 

A victim of the war I fought 

The bushes know I’m sure they do 

They shelter me and others too 

They always greet me as a man 

They keep me warm as best they can 

They shade me from the blazing sun 

and welcome me when day is done 

But how long will my bushes stand 

As urban growth spreads across the land 

I pray for the bushes Let them be 

They make a home for now for me. 

 

Wendell Brown was born Feb. 19, 1945, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Drafted in 1967, he served in the U.S. army, including a tour in Vietnam, and was honorably discharged with the rank of sergeant in 1971, he returned to Little Rock, where he started the family and made his living as a bricklayer. But his tour in Vietnam continually haunted him. 

One day in 1983, he suffered a PTSD episode and fell from a ladder, which left him partially disabled. Gradually, he detached himself from family and friends and drifted west to Los Angeles in 1991, where for more than two decades, he was seen holding his sign and offering his poems in front of the Whole Foods Market on San Vicente Boulevard in Brentwood, California. He died on September 1, 2014, and is buried in Arkansas State Veterans Cemetery in North Little Rock. He is survived by five siblings, three daughters, three grandchildren, and eight great grandchildren. Wendell Brown was 69 years old.

 

Now this, William Butler Yeats. 

William Butler Yeats is one of the greatest poets in the English language and arguably Ireland’s greatest poet. I was introduced to Yeats in 1960 at the Living Theatre in New York City when I performed in his one act play “Purgatory.” I became a lifelong admirer, and I’m honored to include here one of his most famous poems. “The Second Coming” oft heralded for its rich descriptive imagery. No single poem in the English language has been more referenced and quoted by authors and scholars alike. And for good reason. 

 

Hear now “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats. 

 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

 

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 

William Butler Yeats was born June 13, 1865. He was an Irish poet, dramatist and writer, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish literary revival and along with Lady Gregory, founded the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. He served as its chief during its early years. He was awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature and later served two terms as a senator of the Irish Free state. Yeats died January 28, 1939. He was 74 years old. 

 

We’ll be right back. Welcome back, and thanks for staying with us.

 

And now, on November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln came to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to deliver this address. 

 

Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hollow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it could never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here and to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 

 

President Abraham Lincoln died from an assassin’s bullet on Good Friday, April 15, 1865. Mr. Lincoln was 56 years old.

 

The following selection is one of the most profound, however brief, poems that goes to the heart of this podcast entitled “First They Came.” It was written in 1946 by a German Lutheran pastor named Martin Naimoller. 

 

First they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. 

Then they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. 

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. 

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me. 

 

Born on January 14, 1892, Niemuller was an ace submarine commander in World War I and even offered his services to the German Navy in World War II. Despite his outspoken opposition to Hitler and the Nazis. In retaliation for speaking out against a few, Nymuller’s home was ransacked and he was imprisoned for seven years in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps, which he miraculously survived and recounted in his memoir, From U Boat to Pulpit. Pastor Martin Niemoller died on March 6, 1984. He was 92 years old.

 

For your consideration: 

Whether or not we choose to acknowledge it, it’s abundantly clear that we are all responsible for each other and the world, which is exactly the way it is, because consciously or unconsciously, we have made it so. And while none of us made any of the rules that govern the universe, we do make all the rules that govern our own hearts and minds. And despite its many ills, the world is a safe and wonderful place. And we’re not asked to do great things, we are asked to do all things with greater care for the earth and all its people. 

 

I invite you to delve further into the works of the poets I shared with you, and I hope you seek out writers and poets whose work speaks to your hearts and minds and with the power to inspire your life. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard here, please subscribe to my podcast, the Martin Sheen Podcast, with your host, yours truly, Martin Sheen, of course, wherever you find your podcasts. Yeah, I have to say that you can find a complete list of the poets and titles of their poems that I’ve chosen at our website, themartensheenpodcast.com I want to thank the people who make this podcast possible. Our producer and research assistant, Rene Estevez, who assures me that the Internet is a real thing and a safe place if not used off label. And our sound engineer and editor, Bruce Greenspan, the man behind these rich and seamless recordings. And to his dog Gracie, our studio mascot, who snores in pretty perfect pantameter.

 

And so, friends, we part with the prayer from Tagore. 

We are called to lift up this nation and all its people to that place where the heart is without fear and the head is held high, where knowledge is free, where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls, where words come out from the depths of truth and tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection. Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sands of dead habit, where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action, into that heaven of freedom. 

Dear friends, Father, let our country awake. Amen.

 

The Martin Sheen Podcast all rights reserved. No part of this podcast may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form without prior written consent of the author and TE Productions. 

The poem “War Is” and “Witness” by Ramon Gerard Estevez, AKA Martin Sheen, is included here by granted copyright permission.