“…Truly men hate the truth; they’d
liefer
Meet a tiger on the road.”
Composed in 1948, Cassandra seems to reflect Jeffers realization that he was correct about the false sacrificial virtue of World War II—which some in retrospect have named as the war to save the Stalinist Soviet Union, the greatest murder machine of man’s most murderous century—and that just as his poetic warnings of that war were sneered at his suspicions surrounding the dawning Cold War would likewise be met with scorn. Jeffers own scorn is heaped on “religion venders” and “politicians” purveying their lies for the eager consumption of the idiot mases. As a reader in the twilight of the age he warned against his warnings against the lie-merchants that stoke the embers of perpetual war seem well-founded, as Americans clamor for their leaders to engage in military adventure in the name of security. Indeed, there seems to be something about War that calls many men to his priesthood.
Books by James LaFond
SHINE, PERISHING REPUBLIC
While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.
You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains; shine, perishing republic.
But my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there are left the mountains.
And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught - they say - God, when he walked the earth.