Ever Hitler

Ever Hitler

by
Jane Teresa Tassi

There cantilevered on a bough of time
a man who simmers murder stares the air.
A blau and bruise and brown, resembling wine
compose the breath of night, shake down a hair
of stars, then tail-yank evening from its lair.
He sits rippleless; uliginous he thrills
to gaze at, brainstopt all the gory hills

of interlocking dead: couples, kid, a girl,
that moment in a gentle, thriving dream
stopped blank as jolts of blood would cause a curl
to seep around a knife's quick tip and gleam
then cull a sleeping infant from his mien--
This done, the years contrive to seem to change.
Yet Goths, Pol Pot, Nero, a cave, a plain.

    The main idea of this poem is that war is hell. This man's tired, bruised, stuck in a war. He seems to see everyone who is dead: couples, a kid, and a girl. He's brain dead with everything he has seen. He comments that the sleeping infant culls from his mien of innocence when blood curls around a knife tip. The author uses strong language to convey how much sorrow there is in war. It's commenting on how hard and mentally rough war can be. He sits in a swampland, and he doesn't move. It describes how this slice of time is just a sliver on a projecting structure, but time keeps moving without stopping for this single pause.

     This is a good representative for the counterculture movement. It would show that the sixties are just a sliver of time in the past of humanity. It shows that not everyone agreed with the Vietnam War. With the line "then cull a sleeping infant from his mien --", it shows how the soldiers were considered baby-killers by some of the American population. 

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