from Isaac Babel, "The Road To Brody" (1923) in The Collected Stories trans. Peter Constantine (2002)
I mourn for the bees. They have been destroyed by warring armies. There are no longer any bees in Volhynia.
We desecrated the hives. We fumigated them with sulfur and detonated them with gunpowder. Smoldering rags have spread a foul stench over the holy republics of the bees. Dying, they flew slowly, their buzzing barely audible. Deprived of bread, we procured honey with our sabers. There are no longer any bees in Volhynia.
The chronicle of our everyday crimes oppresses me as relentlessly as a bad heart. Yesterday was the first day of the battle of Brody. Lost on the blue earth, we suspected nothing - neither I, nor my friend Afonka Bida. The horses had been fed grain in the morning. The rye stood tall, the sun was beautiful, and our souls, which did not deserve these shining, soaring skies, thirsted for lingering pain.
Showing posts with label military occupation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label military occupation. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
upon the army's schedule
from Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon (1997)
Long before the Soldiers came in sight, people in their Path could hear the drums, upon fitfully directed Winds, clattering off the walls of old quarries where Weld flower'd in glows of orange, yellow, and green, raking the hillside pastures all but empty, with the lambs just sold and the breeding ewes resting up for winter, their cull'd sisters off to auctions and fates less ritual, whilst the rams were soon to go up to spend winter in the hills. Vast flights of starlings, fleeing the racket, beat across the sky at high speed, like Squall-clouds,-- Evening at Noon-tide. In the little one-street villages, women stood among the laundry they'd just put out, looking at the Light, reckoning drying time and marching time, and Cloud-speed, and how wet ev'rything might be when they'd have to bring it in again. Soon the mercilessly even drumbeat fill'd the Day, replacing the accustom'd rhythms of country People with the controlling Pulse of military Clock-time, announcing that all event would now occur at the army's Pleasure, upon the army's schedule.
Long before the Soldiers came in sight, people in their Path could hear the drums, upon fitfully directed Winds, clattering off the walls of old quarries where Weld flower'd in glows of orange, yellow, and green, raking the hillside pastures all but empty, with the lambs just sold and the breeding ewes resting up for winter, their cull'd sisters off to auctions and fates less ritual, whilst the rams were soon to go up to spend winter in the hills. Vast flights of starlings, fleeing the racket, beat across the sky at high speed, like Squall-clouds,-- Evening at Noon-tide. In the little one-street villages, women stood among the laundry they'd just put out, looking at the Light, reckoning drying time and marching time, and Cloud-speed, and how wet ev'rything might be when they'd have to bring it in again. Soon the mercilessly even drumbeat fill'd the Day, replacing the accustom'd rhythms of country People with the controlling Pulse of military Clock-time, announcing that all event would now occur at the army's Pleasure, upon the army's schedule.
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