They withdraw quickly from
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| Spitfire Squadron | ||
They withdraw quickly from |
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| people’s everyday life on the ground | ||
| and enter spirals of dangerous risks and reckoning, | ||
| each second is a question of life or death, | ||
| of being there and killing, of being killed. | ||
| If they can bear a return to | ||
| everyday nearness and words, | ||
| will they die from the too-hot | ||
| spontaneous existence they left behind? | ||
| Is each future action already | ||
| consumed in the air-fight’s heat, | ||
| the mind worn out in the firing’s concentration | ||
| and a dread of seconds of truth and death? | ||
| Does the pilot crack from madness | ||
| in the war-hero’s role, responsible for | ||
| exploding, spattering rape | ||
| and flee forever from the everyday | ||
| lack of excitement and cocky jok es about death? | ||
| We on the ground don’t envy them. | ||
| Harald Sverdrup | ||
| Translated by Louis Muinzer | ||
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