I'll read a couple of more poems touching on the war.
I have never been a political poet.
I never participated in a political demonstration
of any kind until a year ago on November 24th of last year
when I went into the march against Washington, march
against the Vietnam War in Washington, which there were
30,000 or 40,000 people there.
And I expect when the Vietnam War is over, that I will not
be a political poet again.
As a lifelong Democrat, I am wounded
not only by the behavior of our Senator from Minnesota,
Humphrey, but by the general behavior of the Republican
Party, the Democratic Party.
Anyway, here's another poem called "Asian Peace Offers
Rejected Without Publication."
So what brought this on, I happened
to be in London when Stevenson died.
He died of a heart attack outside the embassy.
And it was interesting that Eric Sevareid had dinner with him
the night before.
And when he died so suddenly, Eric Sevareid
thought it his duty to bring out in public the contents
of the conversation.
And the contents were that I-- that Stevenson
said he was thinking of resigning his seat in the UN.
He couldn't go on any longer with this thing.
Because we had a peace offer from Hanoi before the bombing,
which Johnson did not allow to be made public
and which was not answered.
And Stevenson knew about it.
U Thant knew about it.
And he referred to it guardedly, but was not
allowed to speak about it.
And after Sevareid mentioned it publicly, then U Thant said,
that's what I meant three months ago when
I said there are-- if the American public knew everything
about this war, they would not support it.
And the White House was very embarrassed.
And they had to publish relations then,
operating the lights until 3:00 o'clock in the morning
to try to answer that.
But the press fell along.
And everybody forgot about it and all.
"Asian Peace Offers Rejected Without Publication."
"We know these suggestions by Asians are not taken seriously.
We know Rusk smiles as he passes into someone.
Men like Rusk are not men.
They are bombs waiting to be loaded in a darkened hangar.
Rusk's assistants eat hurriedly, talking of Teilhard de Chardin,
longing to get back to their offices
so they can cling to the underside of the steel wings,
shuddering faintly in the high altitude.
At the airfield, they hand the coffee cup to the dawn pilot.
They start the projector and show the movie
about the mad professor.
Lost angels huddled on a night branch.
The waves crossing and recrossing beneath.
The sound of the rampaging Missouri
bending the reeds again and again.
Something inside us like a ghost train in the Rockies
about to be buried in snow, it's long hoot
making the owl in the Douglas fir turn his head."
So at the very end, I-- where one
has the feeling that only the owls really
hear the peace offering.
Because they know that if it goes on,
that they'll be blown up with everyone else.