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Randall Jarrell on Indispensable Warfare

Archaeology Quotations

By K. Kris Hirst, About.com

It happens as it does because it does.
It is unnecessary to understand; if you are still
In this year of our warfare, indispensable
In general, and in particular dispensable
As a cartridge, a life--it is only to enter
So many knots in a window, so many feet;
To switch on for an instant the steel that understands.
Do as they said; as they said, there is always a reason--
Though neither for you nor for the fatal
Knower of wind, speed, pressure: the unvalued facts.
(In Nature there is neither right nor left nor wrong.)

Randall Jarrell (American poet). ca 1945. Siegfried.
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