The most radical text you've encountered in your life, any genre. (via miekal and on fb)
“...The appalling Forms appear,
And the great deities who hated Troy.
Then verily all Ilium seemed to sink
In flames, and from her base Neptunian Troy
To be o’erturned. As when an ancient ash
Upon the mountain-top, by axes hewed
With frequent blows, the peasants all contend,
Eager to overthrow it; all the while
With each concussion of its top, it nods,
Threatening, and trembling through its leafy hair,
Till vanquished by degrees, with many a wound,
It groans its last, and crashing down the cliff,
Drags ruin in its fall.”
--Cranch’s Vergil
"With half a memory and ruined images, I turn over the past, repeating names that have no sound." (via @ae_stallings)
"The Universal Soldier
He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years
He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an athiest, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you
And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way
And he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls
But without him how would Hitler have
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on
He's the universal soldier and he
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war."
--Buffy Sainte-Marie
