WEBVTT

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I like to read "The Man
in the Dead Machine."

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I keep going from--

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rather through extremes.

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This is probably the way you'd
kill a mouse with frustration,

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is to move so fast from
one thing to the other.

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"The Man in the Dead
Machine" is an airplane poem.

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Airplane in it is
a Grumman Hellcat,

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which was a fighter
in the Second World

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War, flew for the
navy off carriers,

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fought in the Pacific.

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"High on a slope in New
Guinea, the Grumman Hellcat

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lodges among bright
vines as thick as arms.

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In nineteen forty-two, the
clenched hand of a pilot

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glided it here where
no one has ever been.

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In the cockpit, the
helmeted skeleton

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sits upright, held by dry
sinews at neck and shoulder,

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and webbing that straps the
pelvic cross to the cracked

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leather of the seat, and
the breastbone to the canvas

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cover of the parachute.

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Or say that the
shrapnel missed him.

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He flew back to the
carrier, and every morning,

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takes his chair, his pale
hands on the black arms,

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and sits upright, held
by the firm webbing."

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