{"id":3631,"date":"2017-09-07T21:28:05","date_gmt":"2017-09-07T21:28:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/?p=3631"},"modified":"2023-05-24T17:56:31","modified_gmt":"2023-05-24T17:56:31","slug":"helens-tears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/2017\/09\/07\/helens-tears\/","title":{"rendered":"Helen&#8217;s Tears"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>by Marc Hudson<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We lay him down, we let him go,<br \/>\nhis mother, his sister, and I,<br \/>\ninto the wooden hull of his coffin<br \/>\nwith its brass fittings, into the furrows<br \/>\nof the winter earth. We say good-bye.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, no thaw:<br \/>\nOnly sleet and wind and the mustering<br \/>\nof an army. Our son, like one of those gone<br \/>\nfor a soldier to the Gulf, one of the myriad<br \/>\nterra cotta minions buried with the Emperor,<br \/>\nIan Geoffrey Hudson, 19. Now the blind ones<br \/>\npin a shroud over Guernica and parley of war,<br \/>\nnow they posture, \u201cOperation Shock and Awe.\u201d<br \/>\nHot metal will rain on Baghdad. A human dust<br \/>\nwill rise and mingle with the red Tigris wind,<br \/>\ndust as fine as the snow that blows over Indiana today<br \/>\nwill gather in clouds and refract the sunlight<br \/>\nover Benares. Countless particles will ride the jet streams<br \/>\neast over the Pacific, providing nuclei for rain to fall<br \/>\non Olympic forests, into sword ferns and salal,<br \/>\nthe cataracts of the Elwha and the Hoh,<br \/>\nand some few, perhaps, will soldier on over<br \/>\ninto Iowa or Illinois or maybe as far as this watershed<br \/>\nof the Wabash, of Rock River, to fall like Helen\u2019s tears<br \/>\nafter the burning of Ilium, the death of Priam and his sons<br \/>\ndispersed into the world the molecules of sorrow<br \/>\nbut falling that day as individual crystals of snow<br \/>\non my son\u2019s grave, making what is so unbearable<br \/>\nappear beautiful. Friend, fellow citizen,<br \/>\nwar is the worst inhuman thing.<br \/>\nAnd burying your child, even in peace,<br \/>\nis like placing into a boat every little possession<br \/>\nyou held dear, and pushing it into the breakers.<\/p>\n<p><em>Reprinted from <\/em>East of Sorrow,<em> published by Red Mountain Press. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Marc Hudson is Professor Emeritus of English at Wabash<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><em>East of Sorrow<\/em> is available at the Wabash College Bookstore. Copies are also on sale at the Carnegie Museum in Crawfordsville and at Von\u2019s Bookshop on Chauncey Hill in West Lafayette. The book\u00a0can also\u00a0be ordered online from its publisher, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spdbooks.org\/Products\/9780997310245\/east-of-sorrow.aspx?src=RMP\">Red Mountain Press.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Marc Hudson We lay him down, we let him go, his mother, his sister, and I, into the wooden hull of his coffin with its brass fittings, into the furrows of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":3635,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-news-and-notes"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2017\/09\/east-of-sorrow-1024x791.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3631"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3642,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3631\/revisions\/3642"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}