Shark and Dogfish

 The Trump administration carried out yet another set of extrajudicial killings on the high seas this weekend—bringing the total number of civilians it has murdered in these boat strikes to at least 192. 

Every one of these attacks has been an atrocity and a war crime. But this weekend's added a cruel twist: it left "one survivor at large in the eastern Pacific," as the New York Times put it. 

One branch of the U.S. military finished its work of butchering two civilians, then left a third bobbing in the dark waves of the vast world ocean—presumably to perish agonizingly of exposure or be eaten by sharks. 

One branch of the military tries to kill a man, then alerts the Coast Guard and the Mexican government—telling them they are free to rescue the lone survivor of their own massacre if they can. 

"The gallantry that slays and then forgives!" as Harry Alan Potamkin would ironically put it. 

What is happening to that lone survivor right now—bombed and then abandoned to a slow and hideous death by our own supposedly democratic government? 

Is he baking slowly under the hot sun reflecting off of the Pacific waves, while he clings to a piece of wreckage for life? 

Is his body being pulled apart by sharks right now that trailed along behind him—ready to finish the job in nature's jaws that our own human predators—the worst predators there are—left behind? 

David Markson, in his book The Last Novel, notes that one witness claims to have seen Hart Crane's body devoured by sharks in the Caribbean, after his fatal plunge. 

The U.S. military has left so much food for the sharks behind in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific, in its relentless campaign of mass murder. 

As Keneth Rexroth put it in his "Thou Shalt Not Kill":

Was their end noble and tragic,

[...]

Indeed it was not. [...] Into the

Hot acrid Caribbean sun,

Into the acrid, transparent,

Smoky sea. 

As Shelley wrote in his "To Sidmouth and Castlereagh"—a poem we might as well entitle "To Hegseth and Trump":

As a shark and dogfish wait

…Under an Atlantic isle

For the Negro-ship, whose freight

Is the theme of their debate,

…Wrinkling their red gills the while – 

[...]

Are ye – two vultures sick for battle,

…Two scorpions under one wet stone,

Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle,

Two crows perched on the murrained cattle,

…Two vipers tangled into one.