The Innocents

By Emmanuel Aronie

This is holy territory, holy ground, their souls –
where they stepped, where they laughed and played and smiled
and breathed, until the sudden end.
They lived in the moment, not expecting anything.
They lived with hearts wide open.
It seemed their joy was endless,
until clouds came, then darkness, then hell,
and then – they were gone, vanished,
only flowers, markers and memories remain.
I suppose they are angels now – it’s only fair,
along with their pets, for whom they cared.
And when the madman Putin and his minions are done,
when their time has finally come –
will they all meet? No, surely not.
Tears for these dear innocents, an ocean of tears,
will separate them from the devils who caused their end.
A holy curtain will separate monster and angel.
The children will move on, ahead of humanity, leading the way.
Putin, his cronies and the army of monsters, with blood on their hands,
harassed by ferocious hounds, barking and snapping at their heels,
will know no rest, only the roar of chaos in their ears,
chased from one madness to another, an endless hell.
The innocents now are little angels,
ringing bells and spreading love,
butterflies in a forever meadow, high above.
They wait for you and me, with roses, laughter and eternity,
love is all around them –
they are the innocents.

The poem you just read is the first of many to be featured in the SICA-USA series of articles written by Emmanuel Aronie. Now, please meet the man himself who explains how he came to move from Massachusetts to Ukraine to bring the Latihan to Ukrainians and use his poetry as his first line of defense against the Russian invasion:

Thumbnail Sketch of Emmanuel Aronie

Most people don’t believe I remember when I was two weeks old. It could have been a month, but I know it was right after I was born, and it’s as clear to me as the pen in my hand. I was laying on my back on my parent’s bed, looking up at the pale blue, robin’s egg ceiling in my parents’ bedroom. On the day I remember, one of my city aunts (Frieda, Jean or Rachel) was visiting our 2nd floor Waltham apartment and came into the room where I lay watching the pale blue ceiling. Suddenly after some kind of noise outside the room, my huge pale blue viewing screen was filled with the face of my auntie. She touched my cheek lovingly and said some words, though it was all just sound to me. I hadn’t learned any words yet.

Years later, after a near fatal accident, after deciding NOT to attend a local Santa Fe Gurdjieff meeting, after 8 days in a coma and about a month after all this, in order to recover most of my faculties, I met my first Subud person, a Swiss lady named Monique Goodwin. She was very impressive, in about a dozen different ways. Several more coincidences brought me to visit the Subud meeting place in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was late arriving, so they just sat me down outside the mens’ Latihan room. The men disappeared into the room and the ladies went down the hall to another room.

Soon after, an amazing chaos of sounds came from the two rooms. The mens’ room seemed very primitive, with stamping of feet, shouting, etc. The women were much more organized, singing like a beautiful choir. Four or five months later, after having to return to Boston in the east, I was opened in Somerville, Mass, at the Subud Boston House there. That was March, 1973.

Fast forward 16 years later, I traveled to Ukraine for the first time, with a five-city tour through the former Soviet Union, after my interest was piqued by the emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev. I was always interested to go because I had studied Russian at Concord – Carlisle Regional High School and Amherst College. Later still in 1992, I came to Ukraine in a program called Network of Healers or the California Healers – though I was neither a healer, nor did I live in California. I lived in Texas. I went because of a strong Latihan receiving I had in December 1991 and this guided me to join the program.

My efforts bore fruit. In May 1992 I introduced Subud in two cities, Kyiv and Cherkasy, and about 65 people signed up to be opened. Sometime later in July 1992, Leonard Lasalle and two ladies, Istafiah Isharc and Kadariah Gardiner came to Ukraine, to help with the openings. At this time 98 people were opened and joined Subud. After several years and many visits from various Subud helpers, including Sharif and Tuti Horthy, Rachmaniah Bowden, Lucia and Rayner Witt, upwards of 350 people were opened and joined Subud. Subud spread to a handful of cities including Kyiv, Cherkasy, Kharkiv, Dniepro and others.

Today, with Putin and Co., we’re back to Square One. Imagine our American erratic, egotistical, showman president pitted against a serious and focused former KGB agent. When I heard of the breakout of hostilities in February 2022, I immediately received a very certain and controlled inner fury that brought me back to Ukraine and compelled me to write over 30 poems, mostly about the war and the circumstances around it here in Ukraine.

This ill-considered war has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, many estimates of the total casualties on both sides approach one million. In addition, wide swaths of Ukraine have been plundered or destroyed and millions of Ukrainians have been displaced, either leaving Ukraine altogether or moving to safe territory within Ukraine. It’s another human mess, something our species seems particularly good at.

If I could I’d be on the front line as a soldier, happily opposing this criminal aggression. My poems are my weapons, the best I can do. They are, of course, my opinions. Forgive me, if I have offended anybody.