Tuesday, May the 28th, 2013

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Broadsword Calling Danny Boy

Broadsword calling Danny Boy . . . Broadsword calling Danny Boy . . . But from Danny Boy comes no word, for he has become muddle-headed, and sped off in a bonny boat over the sea to Skye. One must not be equally muddle-headed, and confuse that Skye with the blue, blue Tyrolean sky beneath which, dressed all in white, the better to camouflage himself, Broadsword perches on an Alpine mountain declivity, calling, calling, hopelessly, into his radio transmitter.

The mountain slopes are thick with Nazis. The pipes, the pipes are calling. The Nazis, too, now, are muddle-headed, and they follow the dulcet tooting of the pipes, like children following the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Broadsword is safe from the Nazis for the time being. He packs up his radio transmitter and hoists it on his back and carries it down, down, to a janitorial shed near the railway tracks. Above, in the blue, blue sky, an eagle swoops. The eagle is neither Broadsword nor Danny Boy. It is an eagle with no name, just as in America, far from the Tyrol, there is a horse with no name, just as, here, coming into the janitorial shed, to join Broadsword, is the Man with No Name.

Later there will be much gunfire.