From: John Penta

when I read Kipling aloud, I
had Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" from "Messiah" (I think?) going
through my head.

Kipling seems apt these days. When I was flipping through my old Black's to
find "Recessional," I kept getting sidetracked, catching lines that clicked
with today's headlines and worries. "Arithmetic on the Frontier," for example,
with lines like:

A scrimmage in a Border Station--
A canter down some dark defile--
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail--
....the Squadron's pride
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

and

With home-bred hordes the hillsides
teem,
The troop-ships bring us one by one
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.
The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap--alas! as we are dear.

Abrams tanks and F-16s against technicals and command-detonated mines made of
old artillery shells. Men who fight to live against men who fight to die. Same
old same old.


Chris Mark