Boston

I am suspending blog posts for the rest of the day. But for the many people who have emailed and texted me, my son Will, who is a college student at Tufts University and the New England Conservatory, is fine. He is a few blocks from the site of the Marathon explosions and currently stranded at NEC. Reports the bridges of the Charles River have been closed, so not sure how/when he will be able to get home.

Such a tragedy. If you feel moved to offer your prayers and thoughts, you may in comments.

Hug those you love. Work for peace.

UPDATE: Will is home. Again thanks for all the emails, calls and tweets.

UPDATE #2: Finally spoke with Will. He was in a classroom at the time of the bomb explosions. He heard one of them go off, but didn’t realize it was a bomb at the time, thought it was a dump truck or big piece of machinery in operation. His class got out about a half-hour after the incidents. Had it been earlier, he would have walked within a block of the bombings.

Today’s events reminded of a poem by Stanley Kunitz. Here is an excerpt from “Night Letter”:

Violence shakes my dreams; I am so cold,
Chilled by the persecuting wind abroad,
The oratory of the rodent’s tooth,
The slaughter of the blue-eyed open towns,
And principle disgraced, and art denied.
My dear, is it too late for peace, too late
For men to gather at the wells to drink
The sweet water; too late for fellowship
and laughter at the forge; too late for us
To say, “Let us be good to one another”?
The lamps go singly out; the valley sleeps;
I tend the last light shining on the farms
And keep for you the thought of love alive,
As scholars dungeoned in an ignorant age
Tended the embers of the Trojan fire.
Cities shall suffer siege and some shall fall,
But man’s not taken. What the deep heart means,
Its message of the big, round, childish hand,
Its wonder, its simple lonely cry,
The bloodied envelope addressed to you,
Is history, that wide and mortal pang.

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