In appropriately spare language, Temple Cone writes of the things we tacitly accept when we add guns to our lives.
—
The Handgun Rules
Face facts: you touch it, you’re ready to kill.
Talk all you want about the sensuous
gleam of barrel, diamond-notched pommel,
or icy balance gathering in your wrists,
there’s nothing staving off nothingness
save an eyelash trigger. The gun’s a guard
against, as well as a fulcrum of, force.
You’d best keep it, like your own head, bowed.
Oh, there may come a night, door picked open,
your sleeping wife and child under threat,
when some rough angel says you must end
another man’s life, but know this: the debt
of lovingkindness you run up must be paid
with zeroes in the bone that never fade.
***
First published in No Loneliness by Temple Cone (Future Cycle Press, 2009)
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Yes, guns are purely for the purpose of killing. The last part of the poem about killing an intruder is false. Actually guns are used mostly in suicides and to wound/kill another family member. http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full Bringing a gun into a home is bringing the reality of death into the household. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is not about safety and protection, but mortality. A gun is an attempt to deny mortality by using mortal force. Yes, it doesn’t make much sense, but neither does a lot of things that happen in life make sense. Can we… Read more »
My old man was a Special Forces A Team captain in Vietnam and a career army officer. I did 4 yrs as a infantryman and paratrooper at Ft Bragg from ’76-80. No war. Just fun. About 10 yrs ago, my father and I talked late into the night. I told him how grateful I was for having never killed anyone. He nodded, and said he sometimes wondered if he hadn’t killed the wrong people.
Most guys who’ve taken a life–soldiers in all the wars–know about the consequences. And not all of them keep it to themselves. Happened to read in a book about English archery–“The Great War Bow”–that archers were confessed differently from the line guys, because they took life differently. Yeah, people already know that. Talked to a CCW instructor about various cases. The shooter, no matter how righteous the shoot, is forever after haunted. Saw a documentary about fighter pilots in the Pacific in WW II. One guy came up on a Japanese bomber from the rear. The rear gunner was in… Read more »
“Oh, there may come a night, door picked open,
your sleeping wife and child under threat,
when some rough angel says you must end
another man’s life, but know this: the debt
of lovingkindness you run up must be paid
with zeroes in the bone that never fade.”
Imagine the debt if you just let the wife and kid -die-.
“It’s better to be judged by 12, than to be carried by 6.” This maxim counts triply so for protecting family members.
On another note, the poem is beautifully written, a gleaming diamond. I enjoyed it immensely. I’m not sure about the debt of lovingkindness in zeroes, that metaphor is a little loose.
But I do recall a buddhist Ripoche and martial artist stating unequivocally that sometimes lovingkindness is fierce, protective, even violent when rare and unfortunate circumstances demand it.
Your comment about the fierceness of lovingkindness is spot on. And I’d offer in response to Phantom (and others with similar views): the poem isn’t rejecting firearms, it’s telling gun-owners not to fool themselves about the purpose of the weapon, about their own nature, or about the psychological and spiritual consequences of violence. It’s easy to be righteous about defending one’s family, but it’s a dangerous mistake to believe righteousness will absolve blood-guilt. The poem doesn’t judge whether or not firearms are right (it’s a sonnet, after all, a love poem, and its details come from my long experience with… Read more »
“… it’s telling gun-owners not to fool themselves about the purpose of the weapon…” Yes, I know. And that needs doing because “gun-owners” are so resolutely given to snap judgements, self righteousness and generally lack any form of self examination. I understand the poem Mr. Cone, I just find it to be an affront to my honor. It may interest you to know Mr. Cone, that nation wide in the USA armed citizens kill intruders in far smaller numbers than the police do, while hugely outnumbering police. In 90%+ of home invasions where the homeowner had a gun, there are… Read more »
[Citation Needed]
I’m a good Oklahoma-bred girl and all for the right to bare arms, but, Phantom, is your honor so easily affronted? Another man’s experience and opinion voiced in a (well-composed and crafted, I have to say) sonnet on the internet leaves you -honor- feeling -affronted-? Why? Even if he did write against using firearms, which he did not, why would that affront your honor? How is what he said so genuinely personal to you that you feel offended by it? Perhaps he felt strongly enough to write about it, because he had an experience where he had to shoot somebody… Read more »
I was raised in a family of hunters. Although I don’t hunt myself, I’m proud to keep a couple of guns in my house that I inherited from my father. I understand and struggle with both sides of the debate.
I think the gun debate has so polarized America that it can be difficult to read a piece of neutral poetry like this and not project our own beliefs into the meaning. I did not read this as anti-gun at all. To me it simply speaks to the emotional consequences of taking a life.
I know a 15 year old boy who accidentally shot himself because his parents were stupid and left it around for him to mess with. So yes, some people need to be warned that guns kill.
If there is anyone who does NOT “…have a moralistic contempt for [his] fellow man…” it is Temple Cone! Oh, those snap judgements! The poem is about the very real consequences of taking another life! It is hard to imagine that the poem would be an affront to anyone’s honor.