and the sun still shone on that bridge

the patriots they waited

but there was no time each second a hammer blow to fate

shielded by some antique battered pauldron

the present giving birth to the destiny all warriors share

in the blood of war and vernix

for to reflect the future yet only the past

held the rays of the sky in its palm so fragile

like a crystalis

in some plausible assemblage of the fates

and they knew it well

soon their blood would saturate the ravines beneath that bridge

and the sun still shone

but there were no bridge

just men falling from it

In memoriam Ernest Miller Hemingway

21st October 1940