With enormous respect for Martin Luther King, Mr. Siegel expresses what America and every person in our troubled world is hoping for. 

1. Something Else Should Die: A Poem with Rhymes         By Eli Siegel In April 1865  Abraham Lincoln died.  In April 1968  Martin Luther King died.  Their purpose was to have us say, some day:  Injustice died.

Abraham Lincoln, as Dr. King himself recognized, wanted the murderous injustice of slavery to end. He considered the Emancipation Proclamation, written in his own handwriting, "the central act of my administration and the great event of the 19th century." 

Martin Luther King is loved for his bravery, sincerity and enormous energy in fighting for the social and economic rights of people of all races. He spoke out early and steadily against America's vicious, unjust war in Vietnam, saying:

In 1968, just hours after Martin Luther King's assassination became known, Mr. Siegel, in an Aesthetic Realism class, read "Something Else Should Die." I had the immense privilege of being in that class, and I will always remember Mr. Siegel's emotion as he read it and spoke of King's large meaning. 

Eli Siegel's love for justice and his passion against injustice is the most beautiful thing I know in this world. He explained that contempt, "the addition to self through the lessening of something else" is the source of all injustice: from slavery,   based on using the lives of many people for the personal gain of a few. 

What would it mean for injustice to die? I think it would mean every person — world leaders and private citizens — honestly answering this question Mr. Siegel asked, "What does a person deserve by being a person?" Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln and John Brown — who is in the next poem — answered it in a way history sees as true, beautiful, immortal. 

John Brown felt slavery was inhuman and had to end; he was executed for forming an army to liberate every slave. Aesthetic Realism teaches that when we see the feelings of others as real as our own, we won't want to be unjust to them; in fact, we'll see justice to them as taking care of ourselves. 

In the international periodical, The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, Ellen Reiss, Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism explains what poetry, and every art, does:

2. They Look at Us         By Eli Siegel Martin Luther King  Is with John Brown.  Look up: you'll see them both  Looking down--  Deep and so wide  At us.

"Injustice will die," Mr. Siegel wrote, "only when an individual no longer can feel that individuality is more served by injustice than by justice; by ugliness rather than non-ugliness." 

Eli Siegel gave humanity the means of seeing justice as real in every aspect of life. It is urgent that people study Aesthetic Realism so that the justice that King, Lincoln, Brown and others died for is a reality at last!

To learn more — including about poetry and the answer to racism — contact the not-for-profit Aesthetic Realism Foundation, 212-777-4490, www.AestheticRealism.org

Alice Bernstein is an Aesthetic Realism Associate and writer whose articles on Aesthetic Realism appear in many newspapers, including her regular column "Alice Bernstein and Friends" in La Vida News / The Black Voice of Ft. Worth and Arlington, Texas.

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