502 War poems

My words were sent underground to where the toggle switch detonates. That was the glare our voices were avoiding. There was something also broken about the obedience of this retainer. The arcades weren’t semaphores just because the arrows leading there facilitated those of us in line as though reliant on east or west quadrants. The ticket master was prone to elide requests from the travelers, the sliding doors sounded a fanfare for the common man, get faster as thought, or mind the gaps. What I infer can never altogether establish a space adequate to the body count. The platform motivates two guardians who were instructed in safekeeping to usher me from harm’s way but my stand point so recedes from this tableaux as to acknowledge a footprint perspective. Translucent envelope inside remaindered by the riptide or such tunnel vision as to warrant arrest. Why I was sent to the nether world inflicted with no wound. Someone lets fall a pair of zip locks containing the pixie sticks of this conspiracy; what I had to say was sent, I mentioned this I think already, underground switch and toggle intended to ignite what I could never bring myself to mean. Where the voices were avoiding me—hands outstretched at quarter day to hold back the beam—was there something broken? I weather compliant. I rally.

Flags of all sorts. The literary life. Each time we dreamt we’d done the gentlemanly thing, covering our causes in closets full of bones to remove ourselves forever from dearest possibilities, the old weapons re-injured us, the old armies conscripted us, and we gave in to getting even, a little less like us if a lot less like others. Many, thus, gained fame in the way of great plunderers, retiring to the university to cultivate grand plunder-gardens in the service of literature, the young and no more wars. Their continuing tributes make them our greatest saviors, whose many fortunes are followed by the many who have not one.

In the beginning we could hear their swords cutting jewels From the protected orchard while our children heard fine teeth Dragging along empty granary floors. Between us and them Stands the great wound, swallowing all tears, all voices. Transfixed or transformed by this pain? We never know because Who can slip through the gate without throwing a shadow Toward both the past and present? Fire, flood, famine— All we've wished upon them a thousand times, still they inch Back and taunt us with their persistence. We track them down To a quick end. More come. And the old memories grow new. The future seems already written with a pen of iron. The book Unreadable, immense. The enemy has become our masterpiece.

This is no case of petty right or wrong That politicians or philosophers Can judge. I hate not Germans, nor grow hot With love of Englishmen, to please newspapers. Beside my hate for one fat patriot My hatred of the Kaiser is love true:— A kind of god he is, banging a gong. But I have not to choose between the two, Or between justice and injustice. Dinned With war and argument I read no more Than in the storm smoking along the wind Athwart the wood. Two witches' cauldrons roar. From one the weather shall rise clear and gay; Out of the other an England beautiful And like her mother that died yesterday.

We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more, From Mississippi's winding stream, and from New England's shore; We leave our ploughs and workshops, our wives and children dear, With hearts too full for utterance, with but a silent tear; We dare not look behind us, but steadfastly before: We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more! If you look across the hill tops that meet the Northern sky, Long moving lines of rising dust your vision may descry; And now the wind, an instant, tears the cloudy vail aside, And floats aloft our spangled flag, in glory and in pride, And bayonets in the sunlight gleam, and bands brave music pour: We are coming Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more! If you look all up your valleys, where the growing harvests shine, You may see our sturdy farmer boys, fast forming into line; And children from their mothers' knees, are pulling at the weeds, And learning how to reap and sow against their country's needs; And a farewell group stands weeping at every cottage door: We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more! You have called us, and we're coming, by Richmond's bloody tide To lay us down, for freedom's sake, our brother's bones beside; Or from foul treason's savage group to wrench the murderous blade, And in the face of foreign foes its fragments to parade; Six hundred thousand loyal men and true have gone before: We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!

a whisper arrives. two thousand. two thousand or more. did you hear it? that bomb. the torture of red sand turning green the anguish of earth turned to glass did you hear it? two thousand. two thousand or more yams cremated inside the earth. poison trapped in glass like a museum. did you hear it? two thousand. two thousand or more tears we cried for our Land for the fear you gave us, for the sickness and the dying two thousand years of memory here two thousand. two thousand or more peaceful place this place. happy place till you come with your bombs you stole our happiness with your poison ways you stole our stories two thousand. two thousand or more our people gone missing. did you hear it? where’s my grandfather? you seen him? where’s my daughter? you seen her? Mummy! you seen my mum? Dad! two thousand. two thousand or more times I asked for truth. do you know where they are? two thousand. two thousand or more trees dead with arms to the sky. all the birds missing. no birdsong here just stillness. like a funeral. two thousand or more a whisper arrives. did you hear it? two thousand. two thousand or more it sounds like glass. our hearts breaking. but we are stronger than that we always rise us mob. two thousand. two thousand or more you can’t break us. we not glass. we are people! two thousand. two thousand or more our Spirit comes together. we make a heart did you see it? in the fragments. it’s there in the glass two thousand. two thousand or more our hearts grow as we mourn for our Land it’s part of us. we love it. poisoned and all

I remember a square of New York’s Hudson River glinting between warehouses. Difficult to approach the water below the pier Swirling, covered with oil the ship at the pier A steel wall: tons in the water, Width. The hand for holding, Legs for walking, The eye sees! It floods in on us from here to Jersey tangled in the grey bright air! Become the realm of nations. My love, my love, We are endangered Totally at last. Look Anywhere to the sight’s limit: space Which is viviparous: Place of the mind And eye. Which can destroy us, Re-arrange itself, assert Its own stone chain reaction.

1914-18 (Sea Warfare) The ships destroy us above And ensnare us beneath. We arise, we lie down, and we move In the belly of Death. The ships have a thousand eyes To mark where we come . . . But the mirth of a seaport dies When our blow gets home.

Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind To war and arms I fly. True, a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field; And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield. Yet this inconstancy is such As you too shall adore; I could not love thee (Dear) so much, Lov’d I not Honour more.

Where’er thy navy spreads her canvas wings, Homage to thee, and peace to all, she brings: The French and Spaniard, when thy flags appear, Forget their hatred, and consent to fear. So Jove from Ida did both hosts survey, And when he pleas’d to thunder, part the fray. Ships heretofore in seas like fishes sped, The mightiest still upon the smallest fed: Thou on the deep imposest nobler laws, And by that justice hast remov’d the cause Of those rude tempests, which, for rapine sent, Too oft, alas, involv’d the innocent. Now shall the ocean, as thy Thames, be free From both those fates, of storms and piracy. But we most happy, who can fear no force But winged troops, or Pegasean horse: ’Tis not so hard for greedy foes to spoil Another nation, as to touch our soil. Should Nature’s self invade the world again, And o’er the centre spread the liquid main, Thy power were safe; and her destructive hand Would but enlarge the bounds of thy command: Thy dreadful fleet would style thee lord of all, And ride in triumph o’er the drowned ball: Those towers of oak o’er fertile plains might go, And visit mountains, where they once did grow. The world’s restorer once could not endure, That finish’d Babel should those men secure, Whose pride design’d that fabric to have stood Above the reach of any second flood: To thee His chosen, more indulgent, He Dares trust such power with so much piety.