Comics adaptation of “Birches” by Robert Frost | julian peters comics
Comics adaptation of “Birches” by Robert Frost | julian peters comics
Real World Address
Only by Fire is Fascism Finished
Year upon year in Earth’s darker forests,
Heaped at the foot of the trees,
Dry drifts of wood rot and leaf fall increase
Which sunlight shall never seize.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by bell, book, and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
The ash that descends in the September skies
Where the leapers swam down the stones?
Best answered by bombs from mid-heaven at prayer
With that fire which hollows the bones.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by bell, book, and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
If their god decrees war, God’s war shall prevail.
His lessons are seared in His stone.
No dreams shall defer, nor wishes erase,
The answers that burn in the bone.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by bell, book, and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
Only by Fire is Fascism Finished.
This Sin is demanded that Your Line may Live.
Only through Fire is Freedom Reborn.
Each generation pulls the Sword from the Stone.
— Van der Leun
A pick to dig out and a lantern to find honest men
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ARTIST: CASEY KLAHN
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Yeah, I was a Swinger of Birches, and anything else that was climbable when I was 7-8 or so. Then a branch broke, I came down fast and hard and broke my left elbow in two places, Spent all summer in a cast, and when the cast came off I couldn’t move the elbow. Took another month or two to get it loose enough to use. That’s when I learned to climb only when necessary, and then to first check the stability and weight bearing capacity of whatever I was going to climb. That was 80 years ago, and have yet to break another bone.
Birches grow wild in clumps in rural NE MA, and I, too, swung on them. But I was lucky. I fell off a bending trunk more than once, but never got anything other than bruises and scrapes. Great fun if you are young and small.