I have been watching the war map slammed up for
advertising in front of the newspaper office.
Buttons—red and yellow buttons—blue and black buttons—
are shoved back and forth across the map.
A laughing young man, sunny with freckles,
Climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the crowd,
And then fixes a yellow button one inch west
And follows the yellow button with a black button one
inch west.
(Ten thousand men and boys twist on their bodies in
a red soak along a river edge,
Gasping of wounds, calling for water, some rattling
death in their throats.)
Who would guess what it cost to move two buttons one
inch on the war map here in front of the newspaper
office where the freckle-faced young man is laughing
to us?
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Comments
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Two Scenes:
1st Scene shows a political apathy, a newspaper who correspondes the news as it happens from a place over a body of water.
2nd Scene is a war torn bloodshed. Soldiers dying for good or bad or they don't even know.
And there is actually a 3rd scene. But, it is quiet, and it is sterile. It is of someone who is wiping the world out of their mind and just living life.
There are really only 2 Scenes clearly shown, and why they are only mentioned as Scenes but there is a 3rd and it's the background.
Nothing is innocent until it is lost, nothing is innocent unless it's obtained.
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And yet, there are jokes being fumbled with by this mr. Freckles. I had to read this twice to catch it completely. I could completely picture this scene though, a crowd in front of the news office, and then a cutaway to a battleground where the button (pin) would have been, and seriously, the lines in parenthesis are probably the strongest and expressive I have read on the subject. 'a red soak' 'some rattling death in their throats'...Overall, I really loved this one, both for its form of expression, kind of abstract and not usual, and the theme, on war and its cost. Life.
Peace
Chris
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