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THE SNIPER
peers into his telescopic sight,
rifle pointed at pock-marked Sarajevo
1000 meters below. At about
the length of three football fields
he can see the silver bird nesting
in the ear lobe of the silver-haired
old woman scurrying across the street.
Slowed by age and a bulky shopping bag,
she's a sitting snipe. How the traditional
snipe shoot has evolved from the bog.
The sniper squeezes off a round
and sees it home. A crimson flower
blossoms on the woman's crown
and she crumples to the pavement.
He takes the pencil from behind his ear,
pulls a pad from his pocket
and adds a stroke to the grimy page.
At last count it bore 250 strokes,
10 for every year of his age.
This meticulous accountant now can hope
to raise his average to eleven. What's to stop
him? He has position, provisions, ammunition.
The sniper, at the top of the chain,
has no predators--he's the archetype
of the contemporary killer,
sans sympathy, sans empathy, sans guilt.
Only his own life counts, others' not a bit.
And we recoil no more than his rifle
at his violations of the human body
and the body politic. Our own civility
topples like a wounded pedestrian,
and less and less we expose ourselves
to the line of fire as the Age of Anxiety
slumps into the Age of Nullity.
- George Held
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