CONSCIENCE - Tapa dura

Why is there so oftentimes violence in the family? Why is the home no longer a safe haven for so many? Why is the sanctity of the church place and schools breached with seemingly no compunction? Why has the twentieth century been marked more by humankind inhumanity to humanity rather than the peaceful use of the awesome scientifi c development and other innovations in eradicating poverty and diseases? Why is the child often lost in the selfi shness of parents and other adults, and the old and indigent is without care? Why the callous disregard of offi cialdom to heed the suffering of the unfortunate caught in the trauma of natural disasters that beset so many places the world over? Why it is always mostly the poor caught in the binds of drugs and diseases such as AIDS? Where would have been the joys of my life had the convenience of aborting the unborn unconscionably realized? Why must pockets of the world's population be committed to bigoted sectarian religiousness and its resulting atrocities that allow no other accommodation? Why would not fi nding ways to alleviate persistent poverty and eradicate ignorance among their people be better ways to serve these sections of humanity? For the foregoing and other questions, the media, policy makers and academia are not in short supply of researches and reports on the affl ictions in our society and other parts of the world. Why then another attempt to bring to bear on the public mind, my impressions of social issues, and worse yet, in the neglected medium of little-read poetry? I am not sure, but I take consolation as I am reminded of Jeanne Claude, the "wrap" artist who said to the effect that an artist does what he or she does for him or herself; if someone else appreciates the work, that's a bonus; and again, Walt Whitman's "The chief trait of any given poet is always the spirit he brings to the observation of humanity and nature." In 1990, I began my American teaching experience in West Dallas, the Projects. In this