Some itinerant Guatemalan craftsmen came through The Foundry Saturday and left us this banner.
Dulce et Decorum est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Wilfred Owen
Photo by Ian Parkes.
If I Were A Carpenter
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, on Johnny Cash’s TV show in 1969, singing “If I Were A Carpenter”. Lovely guitar playing and bold singing. Listen on YouTube.
Lab Thing
The “what is it?” from a few days ago, morphed into something else. Spotted at Buffalo Lab.
Art Nouveau in Buffalo
The original Hotel Statler, later the Hotel Buffalo, a groundbreaking Ellsworth Statler hotel in Buffalo. This amazingly ornate and colorful building, clad in multi-hued terra cotta, was demolished in the 1960s. Photo from Library of Congress.
Guaranty
The finest nineteenth century skyscraper in the world. Photo from HABS, Library of Congress.
Scrapper Truck
Or, in this case, a charcoal truck in Somalia.
Photo from National Geographic by Pascal Maitre