OLYMPISCHETOTEN

OLYMPISCHETOTEN

Stepping out of the helicopters into the Munich dark, the steel of their weapons was already moving in their bodies, the trembling in their stomachs being cast in smooth bronze. When the first bullets thudded home a marvellous alchemy congealed their blood in the ecstasy of pure action. No longer merely human, they froze into the various postures of violent death: hand-grenade pitched, machine-gun sputtering, standing, fallen, kneeling, prone, each moved into position for the final work of art. Grouped together, the hopeless gestures of eternity became sculptured metal, the smooth limbs bronze under folds of bronze cloth, the first metallic leaves of autumn blowing around them in the dark Munich night.