1.27.45

The historian of useless details says: yes I remember. One of my eyes was present at the execution of Herr Schwartzkauld. The historian says: it was quite cold that day. All the people present as witnesses wore gloves. There were half a dozen American soldiers and two Polish prisoners and a mound of bodies set off between two of the barracks but within sight. The man with a star on his helmet turned to Herr Schwartzkauld, who we heard had not committed so many crimes himself but had ordered others to do so, and blowing warm clouds in his ear said, “Do you have any last words?” Herr Schwartzkauld did not understand the language but there was another man, a man without a star on his helmet, who understood how to say this in a way Herr Schwartzkauld could understand. This was the German language. Haben Sie irgendwelche letzten Worte? As the translator spoke clouds foamed around his mouth as well. But Herr Schwartzkauld was by disposition a reticent man, unaccustomed to speaking except when there was some order to be issued. Since he was now in the unfamiliar position of receiving orders he had no language with which to respond. His silence though was accepted as consent for what was about to happen. A noose swung from a wooden crossbeam where one of the soldiers had flung it. They tied its loose end around the axle of a jeep. Some men must be killed in order to meet their conscience, the man with the star on his helmet would write later in his book about the invasion of the enemy homeland and the liberation of the camps. Not that it is my place to have an opinion, says the historian of details, but what could possibly be further from the truth? Isn’t that what living is for? To stand one more afternoon in the cold surrounded by these strangers, your conquerors, but also at a very frank level your fellow men? To shiver and notice them shivering, to say “cold”, to learn each other’s word for that and share it across both tongues? The clouds around their mouths are breath and their breath keeps clouding what they say. It’s worth noting, if he, Herr Schwartzkauld, had lived he might have noticed these things.

Xiu Xiu - Bog People

Listen carefully . . .

BOWIE WROTE THIS AFTER IGGY POP HALLUCINATED THAT HIS T.V. WAS EATING HIS GIRLFRIEND

Gone Home

Let's face it. The stars are unkempt,
flung across sky
(in joy, I think)
and landed soft,
rather than gambled.

O to trust the world's terrain and tackle
the way sky itself was trusted
when it was blank enough
to become blanket.

I know I wasn't thinking much--
but now that my stars are thrown,
fear like a bacteria, fear like a mother
births a new man out of an old, killed man.

That nothing fatherly in me wants to trust,
perfectly, means I risk entire
landscapes, right, means horizon's gambled . . .

I don't know and I'm
at the door and don't know
what's behind -- let's let go now:
this kind of forgetting is a form of building sky.

Then the children tumbling toward me away.