The 11th Hour, of the 11th Day, of the 11th Month
HT 
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WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assassin and poisoner.
The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-torture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man’s forehead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Comments on this entry are closed.
Rickenbaker’s autobiography is well worth your time.
As is this re-creation of sound ranging equipment recording the cessation of firing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTA10n1Ztqo
Awhile ago I was standing in the kitchen and my wife came in and said, “Look, (pointing at the clock) it’s 11:11…on 11/11!” I said, “Yay, it’s historical! Take a picture!” Then we laffed and laffed and laffed.
Eddie R. noted after he landed that there were new bullet holes in his plane…during his flight to the front that day, before the Armistice, the Germans were still firing at him.
It should have happened four years earlier, with the troops of both sides returning home to string up the politicians, bankers, and arms merchants that started and perpetuated that pointless mass-slaughter.
Deep, abiding respect to all veterans on this day.
Dear Skorpion
We in this house share “Deep, abiding respect to all veterans on this day.”
Only Europeans would do that. You think Africans or Asians or native Americans will do that?
The Great War killed Europe demographically and intellectually, IMHO. The best and brightest of their generations were slaughtered in those fields, and to ensure the death of Europe, they repeated it twenty years later. The artists, writers, scientists, inventors, musicians; those that would’ve led Europe into the 40’s and 50’s as some of the best of the world, instead turned to organic matter.
From the old shop – my grandfather’s Armistice Day, near Montfaucon:
http://westernrifleshooters.blogspot.com/2010/11/november-11th.html
“Deep, abiding respect to all veterans on this day.”
Indeed.
And for those interested, do read this recent history; what happened to the 79th Division (my grandfather’s unit) was criminal, and Pershing did himself no honor by aiding the cover-up:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Betrayal-at-Little-Gibraltar/William-Walker/9781501117916
Skorpion, You are spot on. And if you dig a little deeper you will find that it is and has been one family that has financed all sides. TC, you eloquently stated an ugly truth.
It was, “the war to end all wars”, they said.
I marvel at his work.
And yet today Norman Rockwell would be branded by the Left as being a White Supremacist, among other things.
Norman Rockwell abides. Rifles rise dynamically; soldiers abut and defend. The native colors of the uniforms rise up in the pageant of our military past, but these aren’t regulars – they are American men. The militia. Eyes fixed and dangerous.
There is nothing “correct”, polite or yielding about this painting. Like the Bill of Rights, it spells out the fact that we are at war. Have you read the Bill of Rights? It has teeth and it ain’t friendly.
World War I. I read Rickenbacker’s book, but it was so long ago and I completely forgot that bird’s eye view of the breakout of peace. Oh, that war was a waste, was it? Fuck off, mate! World War I was the event that accompanied and sealed the end of the monarchies. Did the Bilderburgs do that? The Illuminaughty? Uhhh, I doubt it, Slick.
We are living critical history as we speak. Do try to keep up, Bueller.
Army National Guard. Infantry Captain. 1975-1985.
If Rickenbacker has a memorial anywhere, I’m sure that the young leftists will demand it be torn down.
For ‘reasons’.
“Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.”
George Orwell