Читать книгу Windows on the World - Frédéric Beigbeder - Страница 6

“And thou, thy Emblem, waving over all!

Delicate beauty! a word to thee, (it may be salutary;)

Remember, thou hast not always been, as here today, so comfortably ensovereign’d;

In other scenes than these have I observ’d thee, flag;

Not quite so trim and whole, and freshly blooming, in folds of stainless silk;

But I have seen thee, bunting, to tatters torn, upon thy splinter’d staff.

Or clutch’d to some young color-bearer’s breast, with desperate hands,

Savagely struggled for, for life or death – fought over long,

‘Mid cannon’s thunder-crash, and many a curse, and groan and yell and rifle-volleys cracking sharp,

And moving masses, as wild demons surging – and lives as nothing risk’d,

For thy mere remnant, grimed with dirt and smoke, and sopp’d in blood;

For sake of that, my beauty – and that thou might’st dally, as now, secure up there,

Many a good man have I seen go under.”

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, September 7, 1871

“KILL THE ROCKEFELLERS!”

Kurt Cobain, Diaries, 2002