Objector

Objector


In line at lunch I cross my fork and spoon
to ward off complicity—the ordered life
our leaders have offered us.
Thin as a knife,
our chance to live depends on such a sign
while others talk and The Pentagon
from the moon
is bouncing exact commands:
"Forget your faith;
be ready for whatever it takes to win:
we face annihilation unless
all citizens get in line."

I bow and cross my fork and spoon:
somewhere
other citizens more fearfully bow
in a place terrorized by their kind
of oppressive state.
Our signs both mean,
"You hostages over there
will never be slaughtered by my act."
Our vows cross:
never to kill and call it fate.

—William Stafford

Posted over on News From Nowhere