jesus h. christ, turkana
this is one special post.
i can feel the emotion.
i'm going to go read it again, several times again, until i figure it out.
wonderful compilation; wonderful cites.
thanks
Posted by orionATL at April 30, 2008 06:45 PMHmmm. Here's another one.
The Captain
Leonard Cohen
Now the Captain called me to his bed
He fumbled for my hand
"Take these silver bars," he said
"I'm giving you command."
"Command of what, there's no one here
There's only you and me --
All the rest are dead or in retreat
Or with the enemy."
"Complain, complain, that's all you've done
Ever since we lost
If it's not the Crucifixion
Then it's the Holocaust."
"May Christ have mercy on your soul
For making such a joke
Amid these hearts that burn like coal
And the flesh that rose like smoke."
"I know that you have suffered, lad,
But suffer this awhile:
Whatever makes a soldier sad
Will make a killer smile."
"I'm leaving, Captain, I must go
There's blood upon your hand
But tell me, Captain, if you know
Of a decent place to stand."
"There is no decent place to stand
In a massacre;
But if a woman take your hand
Go and stand with her."
"I left a wife in Tennessee
And a baby in Saigon --
I risked my life, but not to hear
Some country-western song."
"Ah but if you cannot raise your love
To a very high degree,
Then you're just the man I've been thinking of --
So come and stand with me."
"Your standing days are done," I cried,
"You'll rally me no more.
I don't even know what side
We fought on, or what for."
"I'm on the side that's always lost
Against the side of Heaven
I'm on the side of Snake-eyes tossed
Against the side of Seven.
And I've read the Bill of Human Rights
And some of it was true
But there wasn't any burden left
So I'm laying it on you."
Now the Captain he was dying
But the Captain wasn't hurt
The silver bars were in my hand
I pinned them to my shirt.
turkana watch boston legal tonight on ABC.
Posted by peter at April 30, 2008 07:06 PMwhat comes to mind is australian eric bogel's great anti-war song,
"waltzing matilda"
i always assume that everyone knows it,
but these days that might be a mistake.
and then there is this,
a more savage anti-war poem i have never read:
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
by Randall Jarrell
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
"A ball turret was a plexiglass sphere set into the belly of a B-17 or B-24 bomber and inhabited by two .50 caliber machine-guns and one man, a short, small man. When this gunner tracked with his machine-guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below, he revolved the turret; hunched upside-down in his little sphere, he looked like the foetus in the womb. The fighters which attacked him were armed with canon firing explosive shells. The hose was a steam hose." (Jarrell's notes)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Bad Poets"
by Randall Jarrell
...thin pamphlets, imported paper, hard lives, hopeless ambitions;
ripped-out arms and legs...
100 hundred more years of "no-body gets killed" occupation?
i still can't this post and its quotes out of my head.
for a literary picture of power, specifically abuse and misuse of power, human folly, ignorance, and betrayal
i have never read a book that engaged me more than john gardner's "Freddie's Book".
for myself, i consider it one of the best novels on politics i have ever read.
i don't have a quote from it to add here.
but, as a hint, it is a novel, a fable really, of politics, war, and diplomacy in sweden of the 16 of 17 hundreds.
the central character (for me) is the devil, in many guises, encouraging human conduct at its worst where ever power is involved.
those with literary backgrounds will, no doubt, have much more to say about the meaning and subtleties of this book.
but for me, this novel is right up there with "all the king's men", but more spare, and in an odd way even more intense.
Posted by orionATL at May 1, 2008 09:44 AM