‘And Their Winter and Night in Disguise’

The sea and a crescent strip of beach Show between the service station and a deserted shack A creek drains thru the beach Forming a ditch There is a discarded super-market cart in the ditch That beach is the edge of a nation There is something like shouting along the highway A California shouting On the long fast highway over the California mountains Point Pedro Its distant life It is impossible the world should be either good or bad If its colors are beautiful or if they are not beautiful If parts of it taste good or if no parts of it taste good It is as remarkable in one case as the other As against this We have suffered fear, we know something of fear And of humiliation mounting to horror The world above the edge of the foxhole belongs to the flying bullets, leaden superbeings For the men grovelling in the foxhole danger, danger in being drawn to them These little dumps The poem is about them Our hearts are twisted In dead men’s pride Dead men crowd us Lean over us In the emplacements The skull spins Empty of subject The hollow ego Flinching from the war’s huge air Tho we are delivery boys and bartenders We will choke on each other Minds may crack But not for what is discovered Unless that everyone knew And kept silent Our minds are split To seek the danger out From among the miserable soldiers