Re: The secular candidate for Egyptian president states the peace agreement with Israel not valid
Post 46
Regarding the attitude of civilian armchair generals, politicians and yes, liberals, regarding the GLORY of war:
Dead is Dead: The Medic at Rest
By MARC LEVY: Marc Levy served with D 1/7 Cav as an infantry medic in Vietnam and Cambodia in 1970 http://counterpunch.org/levy02182011.html
."Twenty-five ago I sat in the main auditorium of New York’s 92nd Street Y. The splendidly wood-paneled hall with its comfortable plush chairs was filled to capacity by a crowd of well-heeled Upper East and West Siders. Gucci and Prada vied with flowing coats of mink and sable and the rustle of imported fabrics. The occasion? A poetry reading to honor Veterans Day. At the time the country was not at war, greed was fashionable, life was good, and tonight’s gathering would praise in noble rhymes soldiers’ who’d fought on distant shores for America’s liberty and freedom.
“The first reader,” said the moderator, “Is Jon Stallworthy.”
I looked about. Not many in the room seemed to recognize the name. The gentry quieted their small talk, further settled into their seats, nestled their hands onto their laps. Stallworthy, a trim and handsome man with sharp features and a stern expression, stepped to the stage, stood at the podium, then gently admonished the audience. Today, he said, was not a day for casual celebration or glib sentiments. Rather, Armistice Day, as it was first known, commemorated the millions who died in the Great War, which had ended on the eleventh hour of the eleventh month of 1918. And death in the mud-filled trenches, the rat-infested bunkers, in bomb-cratered no-mans-land, was not pleasant. Stallworthy thought it fitting to read from the poetry of Wilfred Owen, killed in action one week before wars end.
“I will begin with ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est,’ ” he said.
“Do you know this poem,” I whispered to friend seated next to me.
"No,” he replied.
“In a moment, everyone here will squirm in their seats.”
He looked at me strangely. “How do you know that?”
“Trust me,” I said.
Stallworthy was no stranger to Owen, having written his biography and edited the definitive collection of his poems. Unlike many well-intentioned academics, he knew how to read war poetry; how to inhabit each incendiary word, each startling stanza with sometimes sad and sometimes frightful but always energetic audacity. He calmly opened a well worn volume and began to read aloud:
“Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!” An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime...”
The more Stallworthy evoked the dire attack, his voice and body seeming to ache with feeling, the more the audience shifted about, as if the spirit of the suffocating man, an emblem of agony, crawled and writhed before them.
“If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues...
Several poems later, Stallworthy smartly closed the book, bowed his head to modest applause, then departed. Immediately, an audible surge of discomfort swept over the auditorium. Who was this impudent fellow to harm the holiday with talk of terror? What gave him the right to cast a pall on cheerful bustling New York, New York? The moderator, visibly shaken, introduced the next reader, who recited several popular war poems intent on duty, honor, country. He was well received".
He had to move north to vote when he came back to the States...
