we ran the women in a straight line down to the river
clinging to the fear in their rice-stupid heads
clinging to their infants
mice-like sucklings breathing in the air at odds of
one thousand to one;
we shot the men as they kneeled in a circle,
and the death of the men held almost no death,
it was somehow like a movie film,
men of spider arms and legs and a hunk of cloth
to cover the sexual organ.
men hardly born could hardly be killed
and there they were down there now, finally dead,
the sun straining on their faces of weird
puzzlement.
some of the women could fire rifles. we left a small
detachment to decide upon
them. then we fired up the unburned huts and moved on
to the next village.
Charles Bukowski, in The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over The Hills
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