The Sassoon Collection: ix. Fight to our Finish
Here is the ninth of Zumwalt’s revisions to his set of ten poems in his Sassoon Collection.
ix. Fight to our Finish
The bums came back. Pundits played and bites were flying.
The yearning journalists threshed the backlit words
To trash the bickering brutes who’d refrained from agreeing
And hear the shuffled music of fizzled-out accords.
Of all the waste and nonsense they have brought
This moment is the lowest. (So we thought.)
Thumbing their noses across the aisle
Shunning those who break rank to deal,
Making consent plainly futile.
I heard the yammering journalists grunt and squeal;
And with their trusting viewers turned and went
To spew harmless venom at our government
— zumwalt (2011, revised 2026)
Admin’s Note: This is the ninth piece in Zumwalt’s ten-poem tribute to poet Siegfried Sassoon, The Sassoon Collection, originally written in 2011, recently revised. Fight to our Finish is based on Sassoon’s Fight to a Finish. In this transformation, Zumwalt swaps Sassoon’s returning soldiers and jingoistic press (“The boys came back. Bands played and flags were flying. / And Yellow-Pressmen thronged the sunlit street”) for combative politicians and pundits (“The bums came back. Pundits played and bites were flying”), adding in a few unkind words for the press out of general fairness.
