Good morning, all.
Thanks, Brit, for the memory. We'll never forget. Saving Private Ryan had to do with the five Sullivan Brothers and the law that ensued for the armed forces.
hbg, Loved all of your songs. I now know why I know Edmundo Ross. It came from my friend Brucie who was in the Korean War. Loved that one by Nat.
Odd that today is George Patton's birthday. I guess most of us recall that George C. Scott did his life.
For my father- WWI--My brother, first cousin- oldest sister-brother in law, WWII and all of those here and everywhere that served/died in the military.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38wx8C7VmB4
Lunch on Omaha Beach: Bink Knoll
The killers are killed, their violent rinds
conveyed, and the beach is back to summer.
I eat sausage with bread. Full of ease, the sea
Makes the sound of cows chewing through high grass.
They're deposited in government lawn
Set with nine thousand decencies of stone
To wet the eye, shake the heart, and lose
Each name in a catalog of graven names.
They are wasted in the blank of herohood.
They are dead to fondness and paradox.
They're all the same. In the field of lawn
Above the beach, they're put away the same.
They should be left exactly here below where
Death's great bronze mares shook earth and bloodied them,
Where violence of noise isolated each boy
In the body of his scream, and dropped him.
No worn Norman hill should be scarred and smoothed
To suit officials' tidy thoughts for graveyards
But the wreckage left, shrinking in rust and rags
And carrion to dust or tumuli.
To honor my thoughts against shrines, to find
The beast who naked wakes in us and walks
In flags, to watch the color of his day
I spill my last Bordeaux into the sand.
Watching, I wonder at the white quiet,
The fields of butter cows, my countrymen
Come to study battle maps, blue peasants
Still moving back and forth, the day's soft sea.
Setanta has started "In Flanders Fields", so we can all join him there.
"I Have a Rendezvous with Death"
Alan Seeger
I HAVE a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.
God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear...
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
.
