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The Trouble with Words


I too can see the sense in all things green.
I do not fall even though I do lean.
But not too much as to go to too much trouble.

There are funny times when people get mean.
There are dramatic times when people are cruel.
Your grandfathers were killing each other with guns,
In open fields.
When they ran out of bullets they used knives,
Apparently the worst way to kill someone.
Can you imagine all that as being really true?
No, because you yourself were not there.
You cannot know what such an event is like
So it is impossible to imagine it properly,
The piercing violence as it was really pushed.
You have never truly felt the cold edge
Like those people who manned the killing fields,
Freed from history and all moral obligations.

So if my grandfather was capable of doing that,
It is a puzzle why he obeyed his sargeant,
Because it is under orders that enemies are killed;
By method, with a keen sense of forward planning,
When really, with a gun in hand anarchy should rule.

The best hunts alone, not in packs.
We are not wolves who kill when hungry.
We seek motives whether by order or by chaos.
Why shoot an enemy, why not a comrade instead?
I mean, if you believe in peace, why discriminate?
Love thy enemy as thyself, what about the comrade?
Why not hate thy comrade as thyself?
You know how loathsome you yourself can be
So why should he be any better?
Why not take him out of his misery, right there,
If you are going to have to kill someone anyway.
Why do you have to put on a uniform,
Be awarded rank, given a weapon,
Under the condition that you only use it
When told to do so by a person of higher rank?
Is that somehow better, a less bad way to take a life,
If it is organised and planned first?

The generals should do their own dirty work
Or even the King himself. What is it about him
That people would kill other people on his behalf?
Why kill just in a time of war, like good chaps do,
Why not all the time? Because we are educated.
Why the portent of imminent horror was not enough
For a relative of mine to extract himself,
To deny that possibility in human history,
Is the ultimate mystery.

Why give over your soul to the sargeant's order?
What is the meaning of 'Full Metal Jacket'
Beyond the gruesome scenes of people killing each other?
It is you the sargeant who gets it.
It is instant karma, good cinema;
The bullet of the perfect assassin, whom you trained
With such malicious care, in slow motion
Renders your heart useless and your loud mouth
Open but silent.
The assassin then disengages himself from his brain.
It is the worst scene ever shown in cinema.
There is no good reason why anyone should see it
Yet why the US Marines still exist is hard to explain.
That's the trouble with words.

ROMA 27 11 2021