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Sport 23: Spring 1999

The Geopolitical Barbarian Situation

page 120

The Geopolitical Barbarian Situation

We made ‘em like sausages, implying a squeezing out,
missiles on the flat deck, that sort of thing.

The Leader was ambiguous. His foreign audience
was ready to think the worst, strings of rockets

like crackers exploding in their backyard. It was all
just bread and skin, no bite—the prototypes

had crashed in flames. These fakes looked sullen
on their trucks, sagging into the suspension

as if the earth had claimed them one last time.
Sand behind the empty scowl. Otherwise

they would have bounced on the cobbles like papier-
mâché, a child's bluster. In May 1965

the World Powers believed in the give of springs and
the truth of the spectacle, that the goose-step was

essentially honest. There was the smell of imminent danger
that would not go away. Panic followed. Foreign dollars

built a ring of fire to extinguish the sawdust bombs,
effective as the bombs never were, efficient

for the inefficient enemy, as necessary as walls and turrets
on the fortress state, alert and focused.