"Chess Piece" by Peter Kane Dufault

Dufault begins his poem with a quotation from Robert E. Lee about the atrocities of war. Lee was the leader of the Confederate forces during the American Civil War. As eye witness to the bloodiest conflict ever fought on American soil, Lee concluded that it was well that war was so terrible, else men like himself, commanding officers who escaped the hardship of being in the trenches like the rank-and-file, would grow fond of it. In the game of chess, pawns are the pieces of lowest value. In the arena of global conflict, world leaders manipulate their armies like expendable pawns in an unending quest for dominance. Lee's quotation is especially applicable in the present era of computer warfare, where human targets can easily be relegated to mere blips on a radar screen instead of flesh and blood victims.

As Dufault begins his poem, he wonders whether chess is not "half the answer" (Dufault 48). Implosion, the bursting inward instead of explosion, devastation that ravages over a wide course. Dufault knows that chess cannot be the only answer. He believes that society is too chaotic for that. Dufault considers the world an "unmanageable planet" (Dufault 48).