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| Guernica as Picasso painted it. |
On April 26, 1937 German and Italian war planes bombed
the market town of Guernica, a Basque village in northern Spain.
It was one of the first mass
bombings of a civilian population center with little or no military significance in history. The event outraged world opinion.
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| The real dead of Guenica--art by the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica Italiana. |
Within weeks Spanish expatriate painter Pablo
Picasso in Paris was commissioned by the Republican Government for a display at
the Exposition Internationale des Arts
et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne at the 1937 World's Fair in The
City of Light. Picasso’s huge,
dramatic monochromatic black, gray and
white painting became an international
sensation and anti-fascist icon. It toured
the world and survived the Blitz in London.
When the United Nations opened its new
headquarters in New York City, a
full size tapestry reproduction was
hung on a wall outside the entrance to the Security
Council Chambers to remind the
delegates and diplomats that their mission
was to make a world where atrocities like Guernica are impossible.
On February 4, 2003 United States Secretary of State Colin
Powell addressed the Security Council laying out America’s case for going to
war against Iraq. A press
conference followed outside the chambers.
When reporters assembled they
found the famous Guernica tapestry covered
by blue curtains. Officially the United Nations claimed it was in preparation for painting
and renovation. Some reporters were told that TV news crews had complained that the stark
images distracted from the speakers
in front of them.
No
one honestly believed either story.
The picture had been masked to avoid embarrassing Powell and the Bush Administration who were preparing to launch their announced campaign of shock and awe which would include bombing Baghdad and inevitably
cause civilian casualties.
That is the moment that New York born poet Gregg Mosson captured in his piece A World Without Picasso’s
Guernica which was included in the 2007 anthology Poems Against War: Bending Toward
Justice.
That collection
is now considered a landmark in
the re-invigoration of poems of resistance and protest.
Mosson was a former reporter and commentator
whose work has appeared In The Cincinnati Review, The
Baltimore Sun, The Oregonian, The Baltimore Review, and
The
Futurist. His poetry has appeared in many small-press journals. He earned his
MA from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, where
he was a teaching fellow and lecturer. He has authored two books of poetry, Season of Flowers and Dust in 2007 and Questions of Fire in
2009. Mosson currently is a contributing poetry editor at The Baltimore Review.
A World Without Picasso’s Guernica
February 5, 2003
At the United
Nations, blue drapes sheath
a tapestry rendition
of Guernica, so speakers can paint
blitzkrieging
dreams, burying screams affixed and aired;
killing machines can
work again.
Who expunged Guernica from the U.N.,
and then did U.N.
walls tremor
down to their
foundation
in
the “war to end all wars”
and covetous
twentieth century?
Yesterday, today, or
tomorrow
bombs drop and
discombobulated body parts
hurl through the
air, and brown limbs
burst from horses
and spin past a
still-standing bystander
dumbstruck
as infernos smoke
and buildings crumble.
—Gregg Mosson
