“Fathers are always so proud, the first time they see their sons in uniform,” she said.
“I know Big John Karpinski was,” I said. He is my neighbor to the north, of course. Big John’s son Little John did badly in high school, and the police caught him selling dope. So he joined the Army while the Vietnam War was still going on. And the first time he came home in uniform, I never saw Big John so happy, because it looked to him as though Little John was all straightened out and would finally amount to something.

But then Little John came home in a body bag.

There are no longer “dancers,” the possessed.
The cleavage of men into actors and spectators
is a central fact of our time. We are obsessed
with heroes who we live for and whom we punish.
If all the radios and televisions were deprived
of their sources of power, all the books and paintings
burned tomorrow, all shows and cinemas closed,
all the arts of vicarious…

We are content with the “given” sensation’s
quest. We have been metamorphosised from mad
body dancing on hillsides to a pair of eyes
staring in the dark.