Clouds of War and Moral Disintegration in April 2026 - but beauty and achievement are displayed too as Artemis II triumphantly returns to earth

  Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon (1818/1824)

Caspar David Friedrich 

[Photo: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin]

As the clouds of war and lawless horror mass over us tonight, I cannot feel, speak or write. I even find it difficult to listen to music or attend concerts, choked as I am with emotion at the spectacle of wounding, death and moral disintegration of our time. Ukraine, the Middle East and so few are following the absolute horrors of that ‘forgotten’ or hidden, ferocious and brutal civil war in Sudan. The conflict is causing immeasurable suffering and displacement of millions, lack of water and terror for adults and children alike. No oil or rare earths to lust after there I suppose, so imperial attention lies elsewhere ….. 

Yet all this is happening even as men miraculously travel around the moon and return to earth. 

Last night I sat up late and breathlessly watched the astounding Artemis II reentry with extreme emotional involvement, this to an artist rather than a scientist. A prodigious human achievement. The perfection and courage of it was quite beyond my scope of assessment, even my imagination. 

I kept reflecting on the irony of the space capsule's name 'Integrity', defined by Cambridge as 'the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles that you refuse to change'. A grand statement of human aspiration, consensus, modesty, love and accomplishment. As yet, scarcely a grudging word of congratulation or recognition of these immortal, almost incomprehensible achievements from 'the proud man apart' and his pathetic  'acolytes' ...

The astronauts spoke of the beauty of planet earth 'at any altitude'. Yet the most desperately moving moment for me was when, speaking solemnly and fervently, the crew called down to mission control to request that an unnamed crater on the far dark, unseen side of the moon be dedicated to Carroll Wiseman, the beautiful wife of the NASA Mission Commander Reid Wiseman. Nature does not discriminate. She unfairly died prematurely of cancer in 2020 at only 46. Tears flowed in human harmony within the capsule and also on earth at this moment of excruciating tenderness ...

The word and name 'Integrity' excavates a deep philosophical and moral principle. This quality lies in stark comparison to the singular lack of 'integrity' among the heartless, aridly egocentric, world politicians who have now, possibly inextricably, mired us in the rubble-filled  horrors, death and maiming of present wars.

Memories of a poem by the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, first read as a youth when I was in love and caught up in the midst of the hell of the Vietnam war, shockingly floods my brain and heart unexpectedly once more - as being singularly appropriate tonight ... 

The grief and tragic experience of war in my adopted democratic home, Poland, is all too profoundly known to the native people here. The airline disaster of Smolensk (11 April) remains a painfully tragic coincidence. The massacre of Katyń (April–May 1940) also occupies these chance dates tonight. Such events persuade Poles to never again turn  to encounter the murderous, seemingly unavoidable treacherous side of the human coin. 

Beauty and cruelty make strange bedfellows.

In My Craft or Sullen Art

 Dylan Thomas

In my craft or sullen art

Exercised in the still night

When only the moon rages

And the lovers lie abed

With all their griefs in their arms,

I labour by singing light

Not for ambition or bread

Or the strut and trade of charms

On the ivory stages

But for the common wages

Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart

From the raging moon I write

On these spindrift pages

Nor for the towering dead

With their nightingales and psalms

But for the lovers, their arms

Round the griefs of the ages,

Who pay no praise or wages

Nor heed my craft or art.

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And if you have time to read, here is something I wrote about  Poland and Iran in their historical connection:

http://www.michael-moran.com/2026/03/jacek-malczewski-1854-1929-self.html