Chess piece
I wonder about chess — whether it's not half The Answer: Implosion instead of Explosion — an un- manageable planet held in total if brief, eclipse (by the backs of our heads) while an Armageddon of pure mind rages on a tea-table. Consider the evanescent kingdoms of ivory and malachite, how they triumph and topple. And what else, minus blood and concussion, do we have from History? Often now I imagine a life — not a whole life, maybe, but an old man's life passed so, among castles and crowns and horses — a harmless Napoleon or humane Strangelove, his hecatombs rising up eight-abreast again, threatening, in immaculate panoply, and the outcome unknowable: History without horror . . . Meanwhile I will take on anybody. Look: We each get dominions, an army in the field, policy, principles-of-the-wars, and as much choice as the stars give us, or the silos and satellites, not to be Machiavellian, not to play more-than dice with the world.
Peter Kane Dufault
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