*Story board: Guns are pointing from the tower*
Guns are pointing from the tower, barrelsregularly spaced and fired
regularly.They are inaccurate. They make a fuss.On hills above the
town, some windmills turn,sails torn, mechanisms clattering: poverty;a
people most careful with materiel.Galleys slide across the sea, oars
movingtogether. Each row works as one; and each maintains the same
rhythm as its fellows, like the spokes of a well-factured
cartwheel.Inside the tall church tower, stairs narrowas they go
higher, but the circle never varies *from* a circle. At every turn and
at every level, windows cut through enclosing thinning walls, making
slit views of the world, aspects of the increasingly miniature,
allowing a weapon to be fired safely.And at twelve and at one; at all
the hours through the daylight, those bells ring; and rooks flyout
from a clamour; pigeons rise fluttering,reassembling their groups with
much bother.Out of the guns out of the tower come bullets, and often
one going sideways; or a weakness explodes. One person dead,
perhaps.As the guns are fired, they are pulled inside and more emerge.
They are dischargingrandomly. It makes no military sense; but it's
emblematic, sun reflected off the dull barrels against absorbent
whites of the tower. Bang, go the guns and gunsgo in; then they come
out again, the samedifferent guns, like tongues on lips, lizards out
of rocks. They repeat, like a heart beatingregularly, a water wheel
creaking.In the fields women are scything corn. A man from a city is
shooting video. The scythes slice together. The combined sound of
cutsmade simultaneously reaches us now,on a high hill. Midday sun
makes the town wallsbright. Bells echo and double. An aeroplane passes
overhead, shiny in white-blue sky. And parachutes drop from it as it
turns, one wing shining into the hot thin light,the other indicating
Earth below,the span together paired mill sails spun roundthrough part
of one revolution. Inside, wooden gears groan and bend a little; the
mill stones grind against each other, adding dust which will quickly
wear down the biting strength of the population; and the ground food
masswhich sustains life pulsates to wood-lined runnels, drips into
sacks. A navigator peers. A miller scratches his head. A pilot grins.
Trees bend in the wind; more parachutes, dropping, fan out billowing
from tips of unseen spokes.Some packages break from them, splintering
open. Several women shape their long hair. Brushes turn in their hands
as they manipulate the natural covering of their grey heads into
social acceptability.A man is blown from his home-made ladder in a
sudden wind. He throws out both his arms rotating with the fall. He is
excited. Before the man's neck breaks, a donkey looks,to see the
source of the scream, still chewing. It lifts one hoof and brings it
down againin dried remains of grass. A plough shudders at the top of
the field. A ship is coming into land from the far curved horizon. A
helicopter gun ship is returning. White birds are wheeling in a
darkening sky.
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