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| | Threepenny: Marcus, Stories of a Bad Song |
 | | It became clear that, beyond new wars, what has kept the song alive is its melody, and its vehemence: that final "I hope that you die." It's the elegance of the melody and the extremism of the words that attract peoplethe way the song does go too far, to the limits of free speech. |
 | | They made a storm; they took the song's rage into the realm of abstraction, until the end, when there was nothing left but drum taps, silence, and a single voice, letting you imagine that this was all that was left, after the war. |
 | | That put a chill on the melody, gave him an opening into the bad dream he was after: shadowed, doomstruck, the sound of funeral procession, or a line of flagellants in the plague years. |
| www.threepennyreview.com /samples/marcus_w06.html (2044 words) |
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