The Black Day
to the memory of Lawrence Duggan
God help that country where informers thrive
Where slander flounshes and lies contrive
To kill by whispers
Where men lie to live!
God help that country by informers fed
Where fear corrupts and where suspicion’s spread
By look and gesture, even to the dead
God help that country where the liar’s shame
Outshouts the decent silence to defame
The dead man’s honor and defile his name
God help that country, cankered deep by doubt,
Where honest men, by scandals turned about,
See honor murdered and will not speak out
God help that country
But for you– for you–
Pure heart, sweet spirit, humble, loyal, true,
Pretend, pretend, we know not what we do
MacLeish and Mark Van Doren later discussed this poem, written in immediate response to the suicide of Laurence Duggan, who had been accused (justly, it was later shown following the declassification of the Venona telegrams) of passing military secrets to the Soviets:
Van Doren: And your poem appeared in a newspaper. I believe it was the New York Herald Tribune. You were very indignant, obviously. As I read that poem that day, in that morning’s paper, I realized that you were simply blazing.
MacLeish: Right!
Van Doren: Now, don’t you think that’s a right thing to do? Don’t you think there were many people who understood you?
MacLeish: I think the wrath was right. And I think that wrath might perhaps provide a touchstone for a poem attempting to involve itself in a political situation in an effective way.
Later in their dialogue, published in The Dialogues of Archibald MacLeish and Mark Van Doren, they discuss the purpose of poetry:
Van Doren: I don’t think you should expect poetry to make things happen in the world if you mean by things, actions of individuals or actions of nations. I don’t know that poetry has ever had that effect. To the extent that it is real I shouldn’t think it ever did anything more than remind us of what the world already is. The world is whatever it is. Now, that is begging a great question, I know, but the world is what it is. And I think–I’d be subject to correction here–I think the function of poetry is to remind us of our own knowledge of what the world is. Because we know what it is already.
MacLeish: I think you and I agree on the fundamental position here. I’m sure we do from what you’ve written and what we’ve said to each other. I think both of us feel that the real effect of a great poem is to make one really know what he thought he knew. What a great poet does is to bring to knowledge what had become so well known that it ceased to be knowledge at all.
“The Black Day” can be found in a number of collections of MacLeish’s poems, including Collected Poems (1917-1952), available on the Internet Archive: Link.
by Archibald Macleish