from when bill danced the war
by Sarah Murphy

///the docks below and bill dancing i’ve seen them die i’ve seen them die

///that’s right i see him dancing the rhythm exploding the way it always did a bomb going off inside bill dancing with me the change in view our feet dancing the feet of the rescue workers bringing out the bodies dancing for the ones alive the way he once brought out that one young man that other kid from the depth of the jungles the bodies here still emerging from the tangled jungle of steel and concrete invisible across the river and my feet too doing it a slow shuffle like women’s traditional dancing echoing the rhythm of the pow-wow drums the heart beat drum along with my heart i’ve seen them die i’ve seen them die a movement no passerby would think anything of except that maybe i’d underdressed even for this warm windless january day the hollyhocks still blooming ivy growing spring green on trees winter bare summer and winter all at once like his dance now so outside time time halted in the forever and always and already of war and of pain when somehow he’s still there still the recipient of all that pain all this history dancing it beyond his death the way he danced it all his life all that pain all that anger just below the surface all that history in just one instant i’ve seen them die i’ve seen them die aimed like a knife not just at his commanding officer but at every c.o. or c.e.o. who ever commanded ever laid the ground work for any of this

///bodies falling from the world trade centre bodies melded into walls in nagasaki wading through bodies in the mississippi or in guadalcanal the way this stuff would always come out just talking sometimes and sometimes it’s drinking but it’s always the pain and i’ve seen them die i’ve seen them die i’ve seen them die the pain that can never be drawn out or dissipated all that pain that’s all the boys he ever saw die and all the death he didn’t see stretched like a trip wire down the course of history every village that was ever massacred and every blow his own traumatized father ever laid upon his back with the added irony of anthrax arriving in envelopes to give rise to suddenly salient scientific assertions that smallpox is really the one to fear and there’s his voice again they didn’t tell you about the smallpox blankets in your school did they sarah and it’s back to haunt us that all natural ingredients fully guaranteed organically grown agent of bio terror incubated in indians for five hundred years ever since columbus took out the caribbeans and cortes the aztecs and the de soto expedition of fifteen forty-one the mississippian civilization from which bill descended with the virus now only left in labs but still ready and waiting to once more do its job guaranteed effective helped wipe out ninety percent of two continents in terrible if not clinical trials so that i’ve seen them die i’ve seen them die i’ve seen them die all that pain of everything that had ever gone before now sets off the bomb the landmine now not in his mind but in mine again and again as i see him there dancing until once more i am sitting off in the corner of the bench or in his lap and listening to all that pain all that pain that seemed so great it could destroy not just the small peace of an evening together a life together like mickey’s unnamed pain coming back on us again and again but blow up the universe

///the whole damn universe probably has blown up the universe in fact over and over for that matter you never know where it goes pain like that i’ve seen them die i’ve seen them die so much pain that no one could ever dance it down no ghost dance call all the ghosts and me back there in my corner listening and listening until all i would ever want in the whole world was to heal that pain still want to heal that pain standing here my hand sheltering the tiny buildings of manhattan across the river heal the pain of all the villages and all the massacres and all the small pox blankets and all the bombs ever dropped and all the buildings ever blown up and all the poor dumb sons of bitches who ever died thinking they were honoring themselves or theirs when all they were doing was slaughtering the innocents i’ve seen them die i’ve seen them die the way bill always said shaking his head i’ve seen them die so many poor dumb sons of bitches going to heaven or to halle bopp or some star spangled glory the way he would talk about the american wounded in vietnam those years later the one time he went over

///it wasn’t the combat pay that looked good he’d been boycotting for years like a lot of the sailors non-cooperation with the war and all that only tim had been drafted and sent over so bill thought he’d just drop by and say hello except after three months at sea to get in his greeting the tet offensive had changed a lot of orders so while tim was driving a forklift stoned in the saigon depot where he informed us the vietcong bought half its supplies there was bill with the wounded i’ve seen them die i’ve seen them die the about to recover or the permanently maimed he cheered up with survival stories and a listening ear then later just repeating it those poor dumb sons of bitches that’s what he said those poor dumb sons of bitches pity for their position and no sympathy for why they were there just shaking his head they didn’t know what they were up against didn’t know who they were fighting all those hollywood movies in their heads after all he’d been there to evacuate the french foreign legion

///when all the ships maybe even boats in the whole area had been called in to get them out of dienbienphu in nineteen fifty-four or maybe it was the saigon river in some other fifties year another nexus of pain among all the important places of this past century he just happened upon sitting around with those guys all those days trading stories and wine and women shit sarah those men were tough and they didn’t know what hit them either with the poor dumb americans thinking it’s just enough to be an american always enough to be an american i’m an american and that’s all you need that’s right i’m an american and his voice already teasingly taking on that by now whiningly familiar george dubya mighty united states tone that was probably already there in the voice of general george ay that’s armstrong custer if not the original george dubya that’s washington

///while maybe even back then i knew it was a childish wish maybe even then i knew it was a selfish wish that wish to heal all that pain maybe i even knew as i listened with the i’ve seen them die i’ve seen them die waves breaking over me in my seat that all i wanted to do was to heal bill’s pain all i wanted was to make it so he wouldn’t have to dance like that i’ve seen them die i’ve seen them die i’ve seen them die maybe all i wanted was to help him to rescue himself carry himself or maybe me on his back out of that house where mickey always opened up all the wounds that’s right bill all the good indians are dead called him heap big chief run amok as i carved initials or mushroom clouds or screams into the soft pine wood of the table his feet circling her taunts the way he circled the globe to always come back always i thought for me while the waves of pain reached out flames licking like the devil he painted onto the plywood panel for the cloakroom window above my head or was it the kitchen door the exit out flames snaking close to dance his feet i’ve seen them die i’ve seen them die i’ve seen them die but never to take him elsewhere throw him beyond their reach until i would wish my biggest wish of all my wish to return myself twisted into history to stop it

///imagine myself the greatest of women warriors staunch against the abuse of power the subtlest of diplomats a clarity of insight that would make me la malinche in reverse betraying cortes not moctezuma or if i couldn’t do any of that well just somehow managing to run history backwards like a cowboy and indian movie from end to beginning repopulating north america to east of the appalachians make the assault stop long before wounded knee bring a storm to lose columbus and de soto at sea hitler and all he learned from the racism of conquest stopped before he came to power anything at all to heal that pain anything to stop i’ve seen them die i’ve seen them die i’ve seen them die anything to allow bill to be the father he always wanted to be without the pain that forced its way down the generations and him always back to his circled wanderings

Bob Lockwood: On When Bill Danced the War

For her reading of When Bill Danced the War Murphy jovially introduces a bit of background. She makes one or two points on the perspective of the piece (her association for 11th September, the important one, the US-sponsored coup in Chile in 1973), jollying us along like a games leader at summer camp. We then get a transformation, the discarding of joviality for a surge of fierce energy, a melting of apology before an unchained glare of outrage as she flings herself into her highly rhythmic prose. The prose is shot through with arresting images, wry observation and a clear vision of modern society's twisted perspective on the world and its past. This is storytelling for grown-ups, an unflinching combination of wry wit, a wide perspective (taking the long view both personally and historically) and fury. Sir Laurence Olivier wrote of the play Saved by Edward Bond: 'Saved is not a play for children but it is for grown-ups, and the grown-ups of this country should have the courage to look at it.' This is the quality Sarah presents to us. She stands as a direct polar opposite to the mind-numbing presumptions of daytime TV, as a standard bearer for value and as a signpost toward the truth of the world. She's like a kind of literary aunt who comes over and tells you stuff your parents don't want you to know. Her style suggests a glorious cross of Spalding Gray and John Cooper Clarke. In her reading we get two presenters for the price of one - one that wants to explain, to share, to make you laugh and one that wants to grind your face into the injustice of a skewed world.