.
.
.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, & ever closer to Apocalypse we go edge...
Tick-tock, tick-tock, & ever closer to Apocalypse we go edge...
04/24/2013
04/23/2013
03/20/2013
& so Posterity judges
We live, deaf to the land beneath us,
Ten steps away no one hears our speeches,
All we hear is the Kremlin mountaineer,
The murderer and peasant-slayer.
His fingers are fat as grubs
And the words, final as lead weights, fall from his lips,
His cockroach whiskers leer
And his boot tops gleam.
Around him a rabble of thin-necked leaders -
fawning half-men for him to play with.
They whinny, purr or whine
As he prates and points a finger,
One by one forging his laws, to be flung
Like horseshoes at the head, to the eye or the groin.
And every killing is a treat
For the broad-chested Ossete.
"Stalin sent thirty million of his countrymen to their deaths at the hands of buffoons, sexual sadists and deranged dwarfs, yet was a sensitive and gifted poet of no mean talent who could discuss Clausewitz, the intricacies of Marxist theory or the classics when he chose. Stalin was an avid writer of marginalia in books, making comments one scholar termed "insightful" as well brutal."
The Heirs of Stalin
Mute was the marble. Mutely glimmered the glass.
Mute stood the sentries, bronzed by the breeze.
Thin wisps of smoke curled over the coffin.
And breath seeped through the chinks
as they bore him out the mausoleum doors.
Slowly the coffin floated, grazing the fized bayonets.
He also was mute- his embalmed fists,
just pretending to be dead, he watched from inside.
He wished to fix each pallbearer in his memory:
young recruits from Ryazan and Kursk,
so that later he might collect enough strength for a sortie,
rise from the grave, and reach these unreflecting youths.
He was scheming. Had merely dozed off.
And I, appealing to our government, petition them
to double, and treble, the sentries guarding this slab,
and stop Stalin from ever rising again
and, with Stalin, the past.
I refer not to the past, so holy and glorious,
of Turksib, and Magnitka, and the flag raised over Berlin.
By the past, in this case, I mean the neglect
of the people’s good, false charges, the jailing of innocent men.
We sowed our crops honestly.
Honestly we smelted metal,
and honestly we marched, joining the ranks.
But he feared us. Believing in the great goal,
he judged all means justified to that great end.
He was far-sighted. Adept in the art of political warfare,
he left many heirs behind on this globe.
I fancy there’s a telephone in that coffin:
Stalin instructs Enver Hoxha.
From that coffin where else does the cable go!
No, Stalin has not given up. He thinks he can cheat death.
We carried him from the mausoleum.
But how remove Stalin’s heirs from Stalin!
Some of his heirs tend roses in retirement,
thinking in secret their enforced leisure will not last.
Others, from platforms, even heap abuse on Stalin
but, at night, yearn for the good old days.
No wonder Stalin’s heirs seem to suffer
these days from heart trouble. They, the former henchmen,
hate this era of emptied prison camps
and auditoriums full of people listening to poets.
The Party discourages me from being smug.
‘Why care? ‘ some say, but I can’t remain inactive.
While Stalin’s heirs walk this earth,
Stalin, I fancy, still lurks in the mausoleum.
02/12/2013
01/29/2013
12/27/2012
Bücher
Alle Bücher dieser Welt
bringen Dir kein Glück,
doch sie weisen dich geheim
in dich selbst zurück.
Dort ist alles, was du brauchst,
Sonne, Sterne und Mond,
denn das Licht, danach du frugst,
in dir selber wohnt.
Weisheit, die du lang gesucht
in den Bücherein,
leuchtet jetzt aus jedem Blatt -
denn nun ist sie dein.
.
All the books in the world
Will not lead you to happiness,
But they will quietly leas you
Back inside yourself
.
There you will find all you need,
Sun, stars, and moon,
For the light for which you search
Dwells within you
.
The wisdom you so long sought
In books,
Will then shine forth from every page -
For now that wisdom has become your own.
11/19/2012
On moral leadership
Milpub has a nice little post on military leadership: the moral one, that is.
The authors cited a few examples.
- The March of the 10,000
- Thermopylae
- Little Big Horn
- The Confederates at Petersburg
- The Lost Battalion of World War I
- Wainwright at Corregidor
- The U.S. Marines at the Chosin
- The U.S Special Forces at Lang Vei
- Lt. Murphy in Afghanistan
Also included was famed Sir Ernest Shakleton for his failed Antartic expedition.
As well as the sacrifice of Luftwaffe Commander Erich Hartmann who spent a decade in a Soviet gulag than to abandon his men.
Courage above all.
11/02/2012
Common Denominator
"People are the common denominator of progress. So, paucis verbis, no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are liberated and educated. It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills, and the other familiar furniture of economic development. At some stages of development — the stage that India and Pakistan have reached, for example — they are central to the strategy of development. But we are coming to realize, I think, that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy. Conquest of illiteracy comes first."
Economic Development (1964)
10/29/2012
10/26/2012
Is there no virtue?
"But I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks--no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea."
(at Virginia Ratifying Convention, June, 1788)
Recent Comments