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I’ve been watching the poet and translator Coleman Barks, reading the poetry of Rumi, as well as his own, on the UC Santa Barbara channel. Beautiful poems. This was taped in March 2003, and one of the things he read was a poem of his, which was in progress on the eve of Shock and Awe. In it, he speaks to President Bush, offering a peaceful alternative to killing. Send people to carry goodwill; people eager to learn about the vestiges of the culture that inspired Rumi.

We’re different now. We are in Vietnam again, and people are dying, and we don’t know why. It doesn’t make any sense. We have accomplished nothing.

• Countless gallons of blood has been spilled, and Iraq is in chaos.

• The threat we thought we would eliminate never existed.

• We toppled Saddam and dragged him from his hole, only to see him replaced by more tyrants, of various stripe.

• Democracy is an insane improbability of absurd dimensions. People are still without power; their lives are still fraught with difficulty.

• Here at home, reactionary ideologues are running roughshod over our freedoms, all the while lifting a litany of vague and inexorable fear to justify their power and keep a megalomaniac in office.

• The coffins keep landing at Andrews AFB unabated, whether we can see pictures or not.

• Half the country still supports the inarticulate, audacious presidential pretender who got us into this mess.

Sound, rational voices were raised in the days and months leading to this ruddy, unmitigated debacle. Calmer heads failed to prevail, which is no surprise. I just don’t want it forgotten. We told them so.

It’s too late to turn back. Too late for anything approaching victory. The best we can hope for is someone to pull us back from the madness and hose us down, mop up the exsanguination that can never be explained but to God.

But first, November 2 isn’t the Ides of March, but lend me your ears: I tell you Caesar is an ambitious man.