Spitfire Squadron | ||
They withdraw quickly from |
||
people’s everyday life on the ground | ||
and enter spirals of dangerous risks and reckoning, | ||
each second is a question of life or death, | ||
of being there and killing, of being killed. | ||
If they can bear a return to | ||
everyday nearness and words, | ||
will they die from the too-hot | ||
spontaneous existence they left behind? | ||
Is each future action already | ||
consumed in the air-fight’s heat, | ||
the mind worn out in the firing’s concentration | ||
and a dread of seconds of truth and death? | ||
Does the pilot crack from madness | ||
in the war-hero’s role, responsible for | ||
exploding, spattering rape | ||
and flee forever from the everyday | ||
lack of excitement and cocky jok es about death? | ||
We on the ground don’t envy them. | ||
Harald Sverdrup | ||
Translated by Louis Muinzer | ||
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