Takes a bit of doing
dowse yourself in petrol live
streamed – march up to the Embassy
gates stand to attention put
your cap on take a lighter
from your pocket and say
adios – a cigarette burn is
bad enough; a hand on a cooker
see your hands drip off
in the South Atlantic
scream all night in a freezing
tent being told to
keep it down for the sake
of the men, as monks were telephoning
the foreign correspondents in Saigon to
warn them that something big
was going to happen most of the correspondents
were kind of bored with that threat
after a while and tended to ignore it I
felt that they were certainly going to do something
that they were not just bluffing so
it came to be that I was really the only Western
correspondent that covered the fatal day to
immolate to self immolate
a wonderful
almost beautiful word
beautiful
like Nureyev turning
turning the body
slowly
twisting
gracefully
hypnotically
turning
folding
with
grace
burning
.
James McLaughlin
.