Randall Jarrell

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State

And I hunched in it’s belly my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flack and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out if the turret with a hose.

The poem is about war and specifically air war. The overall meaning includes a story of a pilot and his heath. If to translate little meanings by every sentence, it has its own special part. The first sentence tells about the beginning of the fight which starts in a moment: “…mother’s sleep” represents safety and “State” represents reality that the character meets in the war battle. The second sentence tells that the character’s plane got shot. Third sentence talks about his plane falling to the ground and that the life of a person who not that long ago only started living had been taken. The forth sentence tells that the battle was began so fast in the night that it seemed to be a nightmare for the people taking part in it. The last sentence talks how there are not that much respect for the died fighter when they wash him “with a hose.”