Bradley Manning is being held in a military jail, charged with the unauthorised use and disclosure of classified information. Photograph: AP (The Guardian)
Stretching
Nationality is like an elastic band
the massive pressure held in
a trove of births and deaths
secret marriages passed under
crossed paths, the year stretches
(or was stripped)
to a 23 cell day
held on against the shackled minutes.
You make art from everything…..amazing!!
Really like the way you touch on issues of nationalism and the state here. Soldiers seem to be the embodiment of the state but, as we have witnessed in Egypt and in previous revolutionary upheavals, their real relation to the people rather than the imagined nation of the state “The People” brings them into conflict with that same state. This does not really happen so often with the police or other armed bodies of the state. It is always a crucial moment of whether the rank and file soldier identifies with the people from which they are drawn or identifies with the notion of the people and the national interest which is articulated for them by the state and its vested interests. Bradley Manning is being imprisoned and tortured because, according to the state, he has betrayed the people. Personally, I really feel sorry for Bradley Manning as he doesn’t seem to have as many cheer leaders as Julian Assange
Returning to more poetic themes, I really like Auden’s poem about the soldier which also maps out some of the emotional territory of this most depressing of occupations: http://sn124w.snt124.mail.live.com/default.aspx?rru=inbox