Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 20,000 daily subscribers and over 8,000 archived posts.
Doug Anderson: The Wind Comes Up
The leaves at the top
of the sycamore tremble.
The horse raises his head
and his ears come up.
The old dog huffs once,
ambles away.
The deaf man sees
a crumpled newspaper
tumbling down the street.
The town quietly empties.
People don’t bother to lock up.
The televisions, still on,
display a gray fuzz.
Diesel engines are heard
grinding up the slope
into the town; the soldiers
dismount and go
house to house,
come back out and sit
in the shade.
They share the pie
they found on a table.
A radio crackles,
a voice says something in code.
They climb back into the tracks,
move on.
The old man,
watching from the woods,
thinks, I’ll not live
to see the end of this.
~~~~
Copyright 2025 Doug Anderson
Doug Anderson is a poet and memoirist whose many books include Undress, She Said (Four Way Books, 2022). His memoir Keep Your Head Down: Vietnam, the Sixties, and a Journey of Self-Discovery was published by W. W. Norton in 2009.
Discover more from Vox Populi
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
A scary (and very fine) poem.
LikeLike
Doug is great, isn’t he?
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
Seriously gorgeous, enrapturing but also that chilling ending stings…In a great sad way.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Well-said, Michelle. The poem is a pastoral horror story.
M.
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
O my Goodness; thank you Voz Populi, I wasn’t able to find any of your recent articles until today, and precisely when my dear friend/poet Doug Anderson, acclaimed National Treasure/Cultural icon, and a renowned poet, publishes his poem in Vox Populi, and I just happen to walk in. He is here and so is one of his poems, or I should say one of his lights. What a blessing!
I was not expecting him here, I haven’t told him yet, but I consider him as a contemporary muckraker. How ever in his case, breaking ice against/opposing wars, quizas, maybe, setting a future path for overthrowing them; something like the Bastille, or Marie Antoinette in France, comes to mind.
In world history our time is considered the modern age, and soldiers fighting wars violate the principles/rights of the French Revolutions, “The Rights of Men and Citizens” This document along with the events of the French Revolution inspired many countries to do the same during the 18 and 19 centuries.
Our modern warfare violates the modern age declaration of Liberty and Security. After 1776 and 1789 a new understanding emerged about what it meant to be human. It brought about the idea of popular sovereignty and our new role in society. But so it happens that today’s warfare is a serious violation of our modern age knowledge of what is a human and what is humanity! Our governments are just continuing the military traditions of Egypt, Greece, Rome etc. and t’s gotten worse. Our weapons are more violent, so it seems that we haven’t moved forward one bit!
What did the Great Light write?
To start, every day I read something new about the visitation of this nightmare, this fascism which I was warned about since grade school! It seems to inch in closer, and closer; right into my private space! I thought it could never happen here. Now what is these phenomena? There is either a great paralyses going on, or people are scared! But look again, it’s just one little puny man doing all of this! No one dares to stop him! Unbelievable…!
In Doug Anderson’s poem, The Wind Comes Up, everyone is hiding, being very quiet! But the poet is not giving his message from a distance, where the people can shut the doors, turn-up the television or the music. The poet decides to pay a visit to our hiding place. He comes directly to us. We all have been living in the details of our immediate circumstances We don’t want to look-up or past or beyond our nearest horizon! The poem states,
“The deaf man sees
a crumpled newspaper
tumbling down the street.
The town quietly empties.
People don’t bother to lock up.”
The scene and its people are as deaf men/women. There is a newspaper that is crumbled and used. It seems that its news is old, or the news is hidden, or discarded! There is no resistance from the people, nor do they want to acknowledge this sudden threatening wind that comes up! All the nature in the poem, except its people, react to the sound of the diesel engines in an expected natural way. But not the people, who are also nature, seem to be the only ones reacting unnaturally to the threatening sudden visitation of soldiers and sound of diesels. The poem tells how the leaves of the sycamore tree tremble, and the horse raises its head, and the old dog huffs; but as for the people, the town quietly empties, and the people don’t look up.
The poem describes how the people accept abuse and being bullied by the soldiers. It sounds similar to the way the congress and some American communities are responding to the bullying by Trump and company.
“the soldiers
dismount and go
house to house,
come back out and sit
in the shade.
They share the pie
they found on a table.”
The soldiers share the people’s pie, and the people don’t protest.” It’s what just happened under Musk, and what continues to happen.
There isn’t the same reaction from the people of this town, when witnessing the government taking away pieces of their pie, as they did in the past during the Civil Rights Movement or the Anti-War Movement. What is making the difference this time around? The reaction of the people towards the soldiers, allowing the bullying and abuse, tells the old man that,
” I’ll not live
to see the end of this.”
Just a note: What I don’t understand is why people during the Biden administration kept warning the American people that Trump was a fascist and a want to be dictator, they warned us that Trump wanted to end democracy. So why didn’t they stop him? They had enough time and reasons! It was made in the shade, as they say in New York, SO why didn’t they move on it! Are they crying now?
~~~~
LikeLike
Such fine writing, the images so sturdy that I am in that town and feel the sycamore leaves tremble as well as the people who flee. The soldiers eating the pie in that peaceful place – how brutal. The old man could be the old woman, despairing, knowing that this will go on into a time well after her death. I am a little in awe of Doug Anderson’s work.
LikeLike
Me too, Rose Mary.
>
LikeLike
The thought that echoes and taunts as we read the news and watch our grandchildren “ I’ll not live
to see the end of this.” Thank you.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Such a cinematic poem. I can feel the scene, visualize the horror about to take over the screen, the close up shot of the old man watching. It has almost a black and white feel too. However, as so many have pointed out in the comments, the scene leaves the reader to make or add our own influencing to what will be the implied future. The scene is not really an ending, except to the words.
When I pondered what had been evoked, somehow, my imagination saw a small town near Sarajevo, tanks tracking up the hill. One people intent on destroying another people. A true fear of an outside power unleashed into the village . A witness. Us.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Yes, we become the old man witnessing the horror. It could be Sarajevo. It could be Pittsburgh.
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
A timely piece without a doubt. It, to me, raises the question of questions of knowing and not-knowing, seeing and not-seeing, and the possibility of self-denial entirely. Self-denial is generally used to describe when one denies one self some pleasure, some self-gratification, but serving one’s self. I use it to speak of the blinders so many seem to have as fascism begins to dismount from the diesel engines churning into our consciousness and daily lives. At what point, and I frequently raise that question or it’s raised to me, do we begin to speak out, to acknowledge that the favorite uncle is indeed a family denied child predator? What does it take to rekindle the anger of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam anti-war movement, the willingness to give up our comforts, to lay our bodies down in front of those diesel engines, to risk our lives? How many must be brutalized and disappeared by the masked forces before we recognize that we could be in that many? How do I write this in the comfort of my well-appointed kitchen over my warm fresh coffee, sunlight reflecting from my laptop screen while knowing that others are being dismembered by my bombs, that others are fleeing from the kitchens of restaurants where they diligently work to provide for their families and pay taxes to a social security system from which they will never see a reward? How do I go on speaking to so many of my very wonderful, caring, liberal neighbors who somehow glaze over when I bring the world of others into our conversations and tell me “well, it’s not really that bad yet” or “well, it’s complicated”? Why do I ask myself daily how I have not found the courage to emulate Aaron Bushnell yet knowing such individual sacrifices, while honorable and commendable, must be supplemented by filling our jails with our bodies as hundreds are doing in the UK as they support the now-outlawed Palestine Action? But I hear the diesels approaching, smell the greasy exhaust, and know that I have no choice but to keep screaming “they’re coming” with the hope in humanity that makes me believe that “it’s never too late”.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Should read “question OR questions”. not “of”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, Mel. The question is: what is the role of a person of conscience in an evil time?
LikeLiked by 3 people
Instead of a Preface, by Anna Akhmatova
In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months in the prison lines of Leningrad. Once, someone “recognized” me. Then a woman with bluish lips standing behind me, who, of course, had never heard me called by name before, woke up from the stupor to which everyone had succumbed and whispered in my ear (everyone spoke in whispers there):
“Can you describe this?”
And I answered: “Yes, I can.”
Then something that looked like a smile passed over what had once been her face. 1957
(used here for educational purposes only)
LikeLiked by 1 person
I love this passage, Jim! Is it from the Kunitz/Hayward translation?
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lyn Coffin translation; she does it as a prose poem
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, hearing that wind– and those of us of a certain age may know we will not live to see the end of this, but inherent in that knowing is that there will be an end that the rest of our lives may be in service to a just end. Thanks for this.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Thanks, Emily. As always, you see the moral imperative at the core of political issues.
>
LikeLiked by 3 people
The shining path of a poem. There still are ways to know where to go and what to do in this world.
LikeLiked by 4 people
I love this quiet, unassuming voice and relish his appearances on VP. I’m so glad to reread everything again after first reawakening to Doug’s poetry, this is an inestimable blessing of this site for which I’m als grateful. Thankyou Michael.
LikeLiked by 6 people
Hear, hear!
LikeLiked by 4 people
Ditto!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Doug is one of the best poets in the country, in my opinion, and unjustly ignored by the taste makers. His stylistic virtuosity is always at the service of his moral core.
LikeLiked by 4 people
I too like the ability to re-read earlier postings of the featured writer, nicely added at the bottom of the screen. Thanks for that feature, Michael.
LikeLiked by 3 people
My pleasure, Jim.
>
LikeLiked by 1 person