Under the parabola of a ball,
a child turning into a man,
I looked into the air too long.
The ball fell in my hand, it sang
in the closed fist: Open Open
Behold a gift designed to kill.
Now in my dial of glass appears
the soldier who is going to die.
He smiles, and moves about in ways
his mother knows, habits of his.
The wires touch his face: I cry
NOW. Death, like a familiar, hears
and look, has made a man of dust
of a man of flesh. This sorcery
I do. Being damned, I am amused
to see the centre of love diffused
and the wave of love travel into vacancy.
How easy it is to make a ghost.
The weightless mosquito touches
her tiny shadow on the stone,
and with how like, how infinite
a lightness, man and shadow meet.
They fuse. A shadow is a man
when the mosquito death approaches.
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Comments
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The style seems modern for 1943.
"He smiles, and moves about in ways his mother knows," seems so normal a moment, as if the victim is casually filmed for a home movie.
"How easy it is to make a ghost," is a simple, perceptive line.
"The weightless mosquito touches her tiny shadow," is also simple and astute. A casual, calculated metaphor for death.
-to "last stanza" entry:
For me, the targeted soldier is the mosquito. A man of miniscule importance as a soldier during war.
His life is very delicate. Touching his shadow, he carelessly steps over to the other side, to death.
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To my mind this is written from the point of view of a sniper thinking about death.
Verse 2 "In my dial of glass" is the sighting scope on a gun. The sniper views his target, the soldier, carrying on oblivious to the fact he is being viewed for a kill.
"The wires touch his face" refers to the cross hairs in the 'scope.
The sniper metally cries "NOW" as he squeezes the trigger and sends the bullet on its way. Death takes the "NOW" as an order to follow the bullet and gather another victim.
The sniper has made a man of flesh into a man of dust (corpse) {cf funeral rites ashes to ashes. . . ]
The sniper thinks himself damned and that in making a man he has also made a ghost to haunt himself.
The pressure of someone watching you (a sniper warching his victim) is even lighter than the pressure of an actual mosquito walking on a stone.
Possibly the mosquito is also a metaphor for the bullet and for death.
To my mind it all fits given the date it was written and the writers military background. -
last stanza
From guest Child (contact)
can any1 explain to me the last stanza, about the mosquito. i done get it. thankyou
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