Adrienne Rich - The Burning of Paper Instead of Children

I was in danger of verbalizing my moral impulses out of existence.

                                               – Fr Daniel Berrigan, on trial in Baltimore

 

1.

 

My neighbor, a scientist and art-collector, telephones me in a state of violent emotion. He tells me that my son and his, aged eleven and twelve, have on the last day of school burned a mathematics textbook in the backyard. He has forbidden my son to come to his house for a week, and has forbidden his own son to leave the house du...