By Robert Beveridge
--
It's that thread thing, ya know, it's like
I can see wells of history rising
behind me, or some shit like that.
Wells of history? Wells of blood. Our experience as men
has never been less. We have conquered and crushed
the world time and again, used
what is rightfully ours and thrown it away,
been conquered by other, stronger men, the nature
of things. The nature of things is bespattered with blood,
childlike freckles on the face of a watcher, ancient as time.
This thread leads us on, that game when we were young
of follow the leader. You know the one—the followers,
blindfolded, grab the rope and follow the commands
of the one who can see. It takes a true master
to weed out the blindfolded followers
who weaken the group; twist an ankle
in a sinkhole, make one head hit a tree branch,
until only the strongest are left, still blind
and still following, even as they hear others falling.
At Bataan, it is said, the leaders were posited
with this idea. But they rejected it.
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