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Enemies - Using poetry to express feelings about 9/11
By Brenda B. Covert
  

1     There is nothing so shocking as to be attacked-by a bully, a thug, or even a terrorist-while you're minding your own business. We may wonder what we did wrong to cause such a thing to happen. However, sometimes it's not what was done wrong, but what was done right, that brings an attack. Evil men will always try to destroy that which is good. We believe that freedom is good and right; others believe that control is better. Their desire to remove our freedoms moves them to attack. They are enemies to freedom, and that makes them America's enemies.
 
2     More than one hundred years ago, an Englishman observed the way evil seems to come against good. He wrote his thoughts in the poem called "No Enemies?" which follows:

        No Enemies?

You have no enemies, you say?
Alas, my friend, the boast is poor;
He who has mingled in the fray
Of duty, that the brave endure,
Must have made foes! If you have none,
Small is the work that you have done.
You've hit no traitor on the hip,
You've dashed no cup from perjured lip,
You've never turned the wrong to right,
You've been a coward in the fight.

                ~ Charles MacKay (l814-l889)

 
3     MacKay is saying that anyone who stands for what is right will have enemies-that the person who has no enemies has lived like a coward. What does that mean?





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