Monday, February 28, 2011

"Were you there .. ?"




Corporal Buckles drove an ambulance and kept a warehouse of death-dealing matériel on behalf the dynasty whose side this Nation took in the Great War. He died today. We can not conceive of the disson-ance to which this horrific dichotomy condemned this man's mind. We were very certainly there. He was a man before we knew him, who had the misfortune to survive as a public figure.


What would we like, one wonders, to recall our fond rapport? A leafy tree? A lark in Spring? A prettily surpliced chorister to limn the delectable sacrifice, abiding with us these 9 decades?

Whether or not as debris, refuse, garbage, filth, or writhing, moaning stench hauled back from the front in his wagon, we were there, today, as suppliers of his warehouse, of shiny implements of righteous, gleaming carnage, onward christian soldiers of immaculate benevolence. Garbage in, garbage out. Open churches, if it helps, and may our Lord let it. But give us our Homer, give us our civil-isation. Give us what we indolently praise as facts on the ground. Give us what we are. It doesn't run red. It runs black. It shouldn't run at all, but it does.










Willie Nelson
He was a friend of mine
Brokeback Mountain
Original Motion Picture Sound Track
Verve Music Group, 2005©






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