Today

 

"I think, that if I touched the earth, 

It would crumble; It is so sad and beautiful, 

So tremulously like a dream"

Dylan Thomas

TODAY

“We kill so much! Not only in our stupid battles, the stupid street fighting of our revolution, our stupid executions - no, we kill at every step. We kill when circumstances force us to drive gifted young people into occupations for which they are not suited. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, affliction, or infamy.”

from  If The War Goes on: Reflections On War and Politics by Hermann Hesse

photo taken at Highgate Cemetery

Sunday. Jan 17. 2021

"Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:"

W.H. Auden

Cold War?

At the Bomb Testing Site

by William Stafford

At noon in the desert a panting lizard 

waited for history, its elbows tense, 

watching the curve of a particular road 

as if something might happen. 

It was looking at something farther off 

than people could see, an important scene 

acted in stone for little selves 

at the flute end of consequences. 

There was just a continent without much on it 

under a sky that never cared less. 

Ready for a change, the elbows waited.

The hands gripped hard on the desert.

Spiritwood Saskatchewan, June 2016

I think the b&w treatment gives this photo an interesting cold war vibe.

For all my little classmates who joined me in crawling 

under our desks when the principal rang the bell.

"The men were waiting! What was the order? They hunched

over the firing controls, waiting . . . The firing controls…?

"Do It!" Do It!" Do It! Do It! Do It!" 

from The Big Flash

by Norman Spinrad