You would think the fury of aerial bombardment
Would rouse God to relent; the infinite spaces
Are still silent. He looks on shock-pried faces.
History, even, does not know what is meant.
You would feel that after so many centuries
God would give man to repent; yet he can kill
As Cain could, but with multitudinous will,
No farther advanced than in his ancient furies
Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity?
Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all?
Is the eternal truth man's fighting soul
Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?
Of Van Wettering I speak, and Averill,
Names on a list, whose faces I do not recall
But they are gone to early death, who late in school
Distinguished the belt feed lever from the belt holding pawl.
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Great point
From guest lovely me (contact)
The poem shows many aspects of war and gods influence so i choose your poem to read for uil!!!!! Thanks be to you -
I really like the message in stanza two: Cain's actions are the same as our war actions today. The poet mentions some very interesting points, yet his inside knowledge of the key people (Van Wettering and Averill) throws the poem on a different track. The moral aspect with bibical allusions worked. The further defining of the moral by mentioning the "modern" counterpart people just took away from the established feel of the poem. Line 16 seems an odd collection of terms and images.
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The last line is only too obvious to someone who has fired an old fashioned machine gun. If you got the two mixed up you were likely to unload the weapon rather than fire it and you could end up being dead instead of the enemy.
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