"A War"

Randall Jarrell is best known for his poems about World War II, and in particular "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner," but Jarrell's "A War" sings to me more. "You can't break eggs without making an omelette," Jarrell wrote in 1951. Of course, that's untrue; it's actually much more common to break eggs and not make an omelette.

How often are we, in our personal or political lives, meant to infer that short-term suffering will lead to long-term gain? When I quote that line in Jarrell's sardonic tone, I tend to omit his coda ("That's what they tell the eggs").