“What shall we who count our days and bow
Our heads with a commemorial woe
In the ribboned coats of grim felicity,
What shall we say of the bones, unclean,
Whose verdurous anonymity will grow?
The ragged arms, the ragged heads and eyes
Lost in these acres of the insane green?”
- Allen Tate
The Endless War
We are often reminded that the nation is at war. It would be unnecessary, if it actually mattered. After nearly twenty years of it, the tired refrain has made several evolutions: from a reminder to a platitude, and finally to a slogan. For a war like this one—where strategy only shows itself in careless bromides—the transformation is self-evident.
Indeed, Americans are at war in hellholes all across the globe, but you ought to be forgiven for hardly noticing. It’s impossible to know the outline of every front, especially those where so little is at stake.
We are a people awash in conflict. Warmaking invades the most sacred corners of daily life, but it still binds us together. No need to head off to Afghanistan. Everyone can enlist. Everyone can be a warlord. Everyone a hero.
Is it surprising that those who pick up a rifle are celebrated with the same shopworn praise reserved for drag queens, pornographers, and sexless tufthunters? American heroism no longer bleeds, nor does it sweat (unless out of desire). It has all been optimized. And thank the Lord above, too. Bloodless, sedentary courage is the fertile soil of progress. It pays the bills and can even buy a place in Topanga Canyon.
The dumb bastards who do take up a rifle and catch bullets for $1,900 a month, are an anachronism. They have not yet realized that Granddaddy might as well be a Nabataean, and that his tales of General Patton from the last good war might as well be an ode to al-Uzza. Such pitiful verve, they’re still waving a flag with only three colors and giving their all for a sinful past rather than a spotless future! What will they say when that terrible machinery, so carefully designed, finally shows its face at home, and opens those claws wide?
The dead are concealed under clean, pearly rows. Their last moments titillate crowds, who feast on popcorn like hogs at a trough. But the tears of their wives and children rain silently down for a lifetime, long after the fundraisers and coffee-makers have had their fill. Their voices can still be heard from across the river long after they are gone, but only by mothers—a child’s jabbering—or by brothers—the shout of a man.
This is where the living dead reside, in that fallow space between the quiet land of spirits and a world of holy wars, hog troughs, and palatial estates in Topanga Canyon. Holy wars only bring dishonor, but the quiet land still beckons and inspires...
What do we say for the living dead?
What’s their memorial?
Maybe it’s a quiet afternoon, when it’s so still you can hear yourself breathing, and the sun splashes down—and in that moment you know that you are and were, and will yet become. And there’s nothing more to say.