"An affirming flame"

I first heard these lines, below, from W. H. Auden's "Sept. 1, 1939" after 9/11.*
I was thinking my post yesterday was a bit overblown, but at times of crisis, when the world crumbles around us, we might well become impassioned and produce overwrought messages, like Auden's here.

The bit about points of light/exchanging messages sounds like online social media.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Reading the whole poem again this morning, it is frighteningly fitting, with its psychopathic god and dictators talking elderly rubbish...  And now--wow--these lines jump out at me:

There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or police;
We must love one another or die.

 
This doesn't distinguish between Just and Unjust messages... but here's a "Heat map of Internet connected devices", 2014. Via.

Seems a good time to recommend again what is maybe my favorite short story:
"When Sysadmins Ruled the World", (2007), by Cory Doctorow.
It's about some well-meaning people in one of the environmentally protected, underground Internet server farms who survive when a virus (or something) knocks out most of humanity.
Eventually they emerge.

Heartening, frightening, all too possible...

You can read it here:
craphound.com/overclocked/Cory_Doctorow_-_Overclocked_-_When_Sysadmins_Ruled_the_Earth.html 

Doctorow quotes Woody Guthrie's wonderful copyright:

“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern.
Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it.
We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.”

____________________________________________

*  From a Baltimore Sun article by Micheal Collier, Sept. 16, 2001:
"A poem from September 1939 reaches out to September 2001"

As I watched the New York World Trade Center towers explode and crumble last Tuesday morning, lines from "September 1, 1939," by British poet W.H. Auden (1907-1973), involuntarily returned to me:

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man ...
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream ...