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Brodsky 13b Verso
This version of stanza 6, like its two precursors, retains the first five lines which will appear intact in the first "complete" pencil draft. However, Faulkner abandons the images of searchlights, engine racket, and shells in favor of focusing on how the aviator relating the tale was surprised by Huns shooting him down from above. The image of 'fireflies', initiated in the previous version (Brodsky 13c Verso), is figuratively embellished. More significant in terms of suggesting the progression of these drafts is the introduction of the image of the 'great black earth' in line fifteen. Ultimately, this and the image of the fireflies, representing the air exploding with shells, will be merged metaphorically by Faulkner to symbolize the enemy that does in the pilot.
Raiding over Mannheim. Youve seen
The place? Then you know
How one hangs just beneath the stars, and seems
To see the incandescent entrails of the Hun
And you doubtless know
['The searchlight gleams' del.]
['Like wheeling sounds that search the sky for us' del.]
['And the racket of engines and the slow' del.]
['Unfolding of the shells' del.]
['We had released our bombs and started' del.]
The Huns lurking in the high air
To drop on us ['[illeg.] the spewing of machine guns' del.] with a spewing of guns and a dance
Of tracers like fireflies in a dew laden thicket
And the great black earth reaching up hungry hands for us
I wonder that any ['of the fel' del.] people even got back alive
Well
The boxed
To drop on us like wasps around a bat
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