If We Must Die 2 (A Malediction re the Brooklyn Shooting)
A 21st century update to Claude McKay, and a meditation on Frank James, the New York Subway Shooter of April 2022
If we must die, let it not be like zombies
Shot in the head as we shamble, steady and slow
While round us tweets the Mad Hatter’s lobby
Making their mock at our ignoramus flow.
If we must die, O let our lungs fill
So that our breath may whisper pleadings
In vain; then even the monsters we kill
May be detained to dishonor us by bleeding.
O kinsfolk! we must meet uncommon foes
We outnumber them, but still we show our brave
And for all their shots fired, snap a photo
And share it to the world, how our friends will rave
At the murderous man we faced, camera in hand
As we pose for our snapshot of some unheroic stand.
Dedicated to the people who were traumatized by the Brooklyn subway shootings on April 12, 2022.
“If We Must Die” by Claude McKay is among the most important forgotten poems of the 20th century. A shout of defiance in sonnet form written in response to the ‘Red Summer’ of 1919. My response is not a sonnet. I wonder if those who answered his call to arms actually helped or made things worse.
If a shooting like that of April 12 had happened in 1922, white bigots would have rioted, burning down entire neighborhoods (e.g., Tulsa/Greenwood District, Rosewood, Florida), or committing other massacres. Not the faintest hint of that this time.
We are a better country than we were.
Greenish gas in a packed subway? People who did not know what it was would be terrified, and a mass panic could have ensued in which dozens were trampled to death, crushed against walls and asphyxiated, pushed before oncoming trains. Yet no deaths so far, despite the many injuries.
New Yorkers are tough.
And what of Frank James? How does a man shoot ten people at point blank, yet none has life threatening injuries? He could have killed many people…but is this attempted ‘depraved-heart’ murder? Attempted manslaughter? Assault with a deadly weapon? Terrorism?
The Brooklyn shooting is not like most mass shootings.
But my fear, and the purpose of this poem, is to focus on behaviors associated with this sort of violence: how often will most of us pull out our cameras, rather than step in to try to stop the person with a gun? Is that even the right thing to do? If we do it, is that a product of connection to the people threatened, or grandstanding? If many unite to stop such shooters, even the most psychopathic mass murderer can be stopped.
