Showing posts with label 9/11. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 9/11. Show all posts

Monday 30 August 2021

On the Terrorism of Suicide

by Chengde Chen *



Approaching the 20th Anniversary Commemoration of 9/11, Pi is pleased to bring you a poem which originally appeared in The Guardian, in 2001. It is as relevant now as it was thena poem, wrote Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, to help us commemorate and try to understand.


When released from the fear of death

men can be MC² times more powerful

Once they turn their mass into energy

the power is as great as our fear


The terrorism of killing with suicide

is different from that of only killing

Killing is terror

while suicide is a philosophy

 

Men who don't fear death are dead men

because fearing death is part of life

But by cancelling this premise of psychology

they have invalidated all we can do

 

We may talk to ordinary terrorism with war

but it makes the suicidal one more suicidal

If a death sentence is a home-delivery gift for them

cruise missiles would answer the wrong question

 

The way to conquer the suicidal

is to make them fear death again

That is to find the reason why they don't

and to eliminate it as a psychiatrist would

 



* Chengde Chen is the author of Five Themes of Today: philosophical poems, and of the novel: The Thought-read Revolution. chengde.chen@hotmail.com