Silent soldiers on a silver screen
Framed in fantasies and dragged in dream
Unpaid actors of the mystery
The mad director knows that freedom will not make you free
And what's this got to do with me
I declare the war is over
It's over, it's over
All the children play with Gatling guns
Tattooed mothers with their tattooed sons
The strong will wonder if they're surely strong
It doesn't matter lately whether we are right or wrong
But surely we've gone on too long
I declare the war is over
It's over, it's over
Cardboard cowboys in a new frontier
Drowning Indians in vats of beer
The troops are leaving on the Trojan train
The sun is in their eyes but I am hiding from the rain
Now one of us must be insane
I declare the war is over
It's over, it's over
Drums are drizzling on a grain of sand
Fading rhythms of a fading land
Prove your courage in the proud parade
Trust your leaders where mistakes are almost never made
And they're afraid that I'm afraid
I'm afraid the war is over
It's over, it's over
But at least we're working, building tanks and planes
And a race is coming so we can't complain
The master of the march has lost his mind
Perhaps, some other war, this fabled farce would all be fine
But now we're running out of time
I declare the war is over
It's over, it's over
Angry artists painting angry signs
Use their vision just to blind the blind
Poisoned players of a grizzly game
One is guilty and the other gets the point to blame
Pardon me if I refrain
I declare the war is over
It's over, it's over
So do your duty, boys, and join with pride
Serve your country in her suicide
Find a flag so you can wave goodbye
But just before the end even treason might be worth a try
This country is too young to die
I declare the war is over
It's over, it's over
One-legged veterans will greet the dawn
And they're whistling marches as they mow the lawn
And the gargoyles only sit and grieve
The gypsy fortune teller told me that we'd been deceived
You only are what you believe
I believe the war is over
It's over, it's over
Phil Ochs
"The past is never dead. It's not even past." Requiem for a Nun, William Faulkner
Monday, May 25, 2020
Monday, May 4, 2020
"It Seems There Are No More Songs"
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
Philip Larkin
"Aubade"
Collected Poems.
Friday, May 1, 2020
The Right Mindset for Our Times?
I was at that time a stupidist, and probably still am. Stupidism is the
theory that people are stupid in the measure of their most powerful
agency. They’re stupid precisely when we need them not to be stupid.
Much as I didn’t want to be a stupidist—it’s dispiriting, for starters—I
recognized that it improved my grasp on things. Whereas I used to
listen with great respect to what the Treasury Secretary or the C.E.O.
of a booming conglomerate or even your regular talking head had to say,
now I presumed that they were full of it. It was revelatory. The world
makes a lot more sense when you accept that it’s run by dingbats. And
once you’ve recognized the nature of stupidity—that it expresses a
relation between a person and that person’s situation; that it describes
the gap between what ought to be understood and done and what is, in
fact, understood and done—you begin to recognize the magnitude of the
problem. Stupidity isn’t inevitable or constant, of course, but in the
long run it almost always prevails. Alan Greenspan? Stupid, ultimately.
Barack Obama? Not as smart as he needed to be, at the end of the day.
Joe Schmo? Amazingly stupid.
The Flier
Joseph O'Neill
The New Yorker
November 11, 2019
The Flier
Joseph O'Neill
The New Yorker
November 11, 2019
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