502 War poems

Now, youth, the hour of thy dread passion comes; Thy lovely things must all be laid away; And thou, as others, must face the riven day Unstirred by rattle of the rolling drums, Or bugles' strident cry. When mere noise numbs The sense of being, the sick soul doth sway, Remember thy great craft's honour, that they may say Nothing in shame of poets. Then the crumbs Of praise the little versemen joyed to take Shall be forgotten; then they must know we are, For all our skill in words, equal in might And strong of mettle as those we honoured; make The name of poet terrible in just war, And like a crown of honour upon the fight.

When I remember plain heroic strength And shining virtue shown by Ypres pools, Then read the blither written by knaves for fools In praise of English soldiers lying at length, Who purely dream what England shall be made Gloriously new, free of the old stains By us, who pay the price that must be paid, Will freeze all winter over Ypres plains. Our silly dreams of peace you put aside And brotherhood of man, for you will see An armed mistress, braggart of the tide, Her children slaves, under your mastery. We'll have a word there too, and forge a knife, Will cut the cancer threatens England's life.

After the declaration by emperor to stop the war many people in Tokyo killed themselves, for instance, in front of the imperial palace. But few people knows those facts. Hence you must teach me where you got the news or what sort of book gave you the fact that quite few people knows. To know the fact of our nation’s subjection is not so comfortable but the fact of many people’s spontaneous death gives me more complicated feelings. In the matter of what William Gass said I must describe my feelings. I went to Nagasaki on an educational trip four years ago. I can recollect those serious moment which was given by the beamed materials in the memorial hall. But most youth after the war are indifferent to those nightmares because of our no experience. Surely, I think, those barbarious conducts shouldn’t be forgiven or forgotten at all and we must not close our eyes to the rebombing at any place in this world. In conclusion I may say that most people except sufferers or the like will not have ill feelings toward your country but they will reproach the suffocative fact in history. Where were you when the World War II was over. Please share your experience of the war with me. I’m now interested in the wars concerned with Japan for the past 100 years. If you tell me your reflections I can suspect more seriously. You have abandoned such cursed things as useless? In that war 3 million people were killed on the side of our nation, especially three hundred thousand people by the A-bomb. Over the war between the imperialism and militarism America won a victory. What does this word mean?

The bugle sounds the measured call to prayers, The band starts bravely with a clarion hymn, From every side, singly, in groups, in pairs, Each to his kind of service comes to worship Him. Our faces washed, our hearts in the right place, We kneel or stand or listen from our tents; Half-naked natives with their kind of grace Move down the road with balanced staffs like mendicants. And over the hill the guns bang like a door And planes repeat their mission in the heights. The jungle outmaneuvers creeping war And crawls within the circle of our sacred rites. I long for our disheveled Sundays home, Breakfast, the comics, news of latest crimes, Talk without reference, and palindromes, Sleep and the Philharmonic and the ponderous Times . I long for lounging in the afternoons Of clean intelligent warmth, my brother’s mind, Books and thin plates and flowers and shining spoons, And your love’s presence, snowy, beautiful, and kind.

1 I wanted to write an epic about suffering, but when I found a tendril of her hair among the ruins of her mud house, I found my epic there. 2 I didn’t sleep last night. As if the night were hiding in the morning coffee. 3 Her life is a game of snakes and ladders sent relentlessly back to square one, but whose life isn’t? She takes a breath and throws the dice again. 4 The city glitters below the airplane window, not because of the bones and skulls scattered under the sun, but the view through the frosted breather hole. 5 She died, and time changed for those she loved most, but her watch kept ticking. 6 A god carried the burdens until the weight persuaded him to transfer them to man — the new suffering god. 7 The map of Iraq looks like a mitten, and so does the map of Michigan — a match I made by chance. 8 If you can’t save people, at least don’t hate them. 9 Her bubbling annoys me — can’t understand a word she says. So what if I toss her from the aquarium? So what if I spill her new world with this nasty immigrant fish! 10 The city’s innumerable lights turning on and off remind us we are born to arrive, as we are born to leave. 11 The handkerchiefs are theirs, but the tears are ours. 12 Women running barefoot. Behind them, stars falling from the sky. 13 So strange, in my dream of us, you were also a dream. 14 He said to me:You are in my eyes. Now when he sleeps, his eyelids cover me. 15 Gilgamesh stopped wishing for immortality, for only in death could he be certain of seeing his friend Enkidu again. 16 Some say love means putting all your eggs in one basket. If they all break, can the basket remain intact? 17 The homeless are not afraid to miss something. What passes through their eyes is how the clouds pass over the rushing cars, the way pigeons miss some of the seeds on the road and move away. Yet only they know what it means to have a home and to return to it. 18 The wind and rain don’t discriminate in buffeting us. We are equal in the eyes of the storm. 19 When I was broken into fragments, you puzzled me back together piece by piece. I no longer fear being broken in any moment. 20 Freezing in the mountains without blankets or food, and all they heard was no news is good news. 21 Their stories didn’t kill me but I would die if I didn’t tell them to you. 22 Before killing them they collected their personal effects. Their cell phones are all ringing in the box. 23 We are not upset when the grass dies. We know it will come back in a season or two. The dead don’t come back but they appear every time in the greenness of the grass. 24 If yearning encircles us, what does it portend? That a circle has no beginning and no end?

For Ghassan Zaqtan 1 I now release from my blood                the bird of   thirty she wasted that’s how wars                                        crumble us I now tell those                                        who are exhausted from the expense of children the secret                              of   happiness and happiness itself from what is arrived at                          but doesn’t come from the language                                  of   balance defeat                                                        has the taste of    being shrouded                                 with another’s banner while your enemies                                chant your names Some music                                              some shelling will strike our dead                                 who flew off in the early raids have you seen them                                return from their flying? They stayed behind                                 hanging by the thread of their surprise                                       and by their women’s hair We will dance                                           in the wreckage drink the coffee our dead left brewing                             we will open our tombs to windows for the sea                            in order for the sea to remain                               besieged Right here                                                 right here a corpse shook its trunk                         in the earth a corpse snapped God’s ropes                                               houses gathered then hid what’s easy to interpret                          of   people’s speech Which mourners ebbed                         and turned the sea to tombstones for our dead which poem                      was said and revived us? And that huge rose of ours                    our only bewilderment our offense                                                on earth our balcony on the kingdom of   heaven                    the grandfather’s house a hand that gestures                               farewell in the roar of   the massacre                   a white hand like old time a free hand like death                             after death Tell my love                                              space has been plucked tell her to sleep                                        on disaffection’s stone 2 Two raids three raids                             a whole morning a year of   long                                           bombardment over your going Did you forget                                          a newspaper of   palm fronds a time of   white dawn                             some hay from last season’s siege a brief greeting                                        like a mumbling on mornings                                            of   slow advance a suitcase a rug a palm                          with which you touched the evening of shelling                                                 into a meaning for a people                                              kind and assured and silent? Whenever glass shook                           you would shriek kid                                                              I pluck your death’s anemone                           and eat it Each land                                                  has its people each time                                                  has its folks and time for a while now                                        has been standing on our throats As if   we don’t love                                  or hate as if we’ve seen the land only as a bracelet                                    a house a dress a poem left filled with those who were killed                   without war 3 Memory shrinks                                      until it fits in a fist memory shrinks                                      without forgetting a boy in a farm                                         a chicken on a roof a dot on the planet                                  mysterious and intuitive like parents or a tree for a hat                                     with prairies for a dictionary                                         and days like sleeves short in summer                                      cotton in winter they resist when squeezed                     between our knees A not so First World                               rains on a calm boy torn apart                                                  like a tattered tent The lily of words                                      enters his heart takes a wedding by the horns                                              a well-trained bulbul by the scandalous                                    fruit rush of the river His return                                                 will be washed shrouded a field’s first flower                                 guarded by dirt Coffee coffee                                            for the beautiful one whose heart’s                                           a tambourine this morning while war                                                  shouts cold on slopes 4 In the saddles                                          grass grows warmth matures                                     in oleander the river pours                                        in your absence everything                                                will happen I exchanged                                             half of my books to sit near you flung my hand                                         so that it may see you then retrieved it                                      to touch what it saw We slept like sponges                            near the river butterflies descended from the ribs of shadow                        then left behind a mirror pitched                                     like a house of   jinn 5 It’ll be difficult                                          that you go before you choose a grave                      fit for sleep It’ll be difficult                                         that you die before you choose a grave                     fit for running for flood swimming                                for dense reeds by irrigation channels for bird snares                                         for the lettuce garden in the backyard for old dry thatch                                    on mud roofs for jujube shrubs                                     for climbing on trucks and holding on to vegetable boxes                                   for the diffusion of secrets loading and unloading                           in the big market A grave fit for you                                    to see Jericho light up through the windows                              as a neon garden the refugee camps                                    by the marshes touch A grave fit for you                                    to see Jericho’s convent toss grass liquor our way                                fir for some arches where oleander wilts                               near Bedouin tents And their watchdogs                               will dig and dig and dig and dig                                        and you won’t come 6 And the mules                                           in the junkyards does anyone feed                                      their loneliness when they cry? Or has anyone quenched                        their oneness or washed their dead necks                                       or visited them to remember how they blackened                                          in their sleep? The mules the movie                               extras who fold their torsos in the packed air                                       as lineage floats on light                                            an icon of wondrous dust                                     and riddles 7 And our neighbor                                    the one whose voice fenced us with reeds                               all day and all night She would forget                                      her rings in our hands two boys                                                    who used to dance for her

The rain comes late, draws the afternoon into darkness, no light where there should be light, no way to be but drenched until it curves down over your lips. The taste of every living thing is in the raindrop the way all things open their eyes inside a single bloom in the garden that is now hushed in a robe. Whatever you feel about it, whether you live for it or pray for the rains to die, the water joins with all of us, tendon, bone, artery, vein, saliva, everything that melts and goes hard, escapes as air. The water brings a reunion for a moment with what we know each time we breathe ourselves here or are forced to breathe. If I write without color it is to obey the gray way rain brings the past to us. The ten thousand are one giant palace with a room for remembering, where you must stand alone, touch and believe while it seems you are touching nothing and have gone all mad in this life, this gift. We are sitting on a rock in the thick falling of water, purple lilies are growing in the sun's ocean shadow, sheep with golden wool are flying in the trees, a patient monkey is bandaging a wounded blade of grass, the garden is a mesa, seeds are mountain caves, the moon has gone infinite, made two of its own selves for each of our palms. Now we have faces.

(Being the philosophy of many Soldiers.) Sit on the bed; I'm blind, and three parts shell. Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall. Both arms have mutinied against me,—brutes. My fingers fidget like ten idle brats. I tried to peg out soldierly,—no use! One dies of war like any old disease. This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes. I have my medals?—Discs to make eyes close. My glorious ribbons?—Ripped from my own back In scarlet shreds. (That's for your poetry book.) A short life and a merry one, my buck! We used to say we'd hate to live dead-old,— Yet now ... I'd willingly be puffy, bald, And patriotic. Buffers catch from boys At least the jokes hurled at them. I suppose Little I'd ever teach a son, but hitting, Shooting, war, hunting, all the arts of hurting. Well, that's what I learnt,—that, and making money. Your fifty years ahead seem none too many? Tell me how long I've got? God! For one year To help myself to nothing more than air! One Spring! Is one too good to spare, too long? Spring wind would work its own way to my lung, And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots. My servant's lamed, but listen how he shouts! When I'm lugged out, he'll still be good for that. Here in this mummy-case, you know, I've thought How well I might have swept his floors for ever. I'd ask no night off when the bustle's over, Enjoying so the dirt. Who's prejudiced Against a grimed hand when his own's quite dust, Less live than specks that in the sun-shafts turn, Less warm than dust that mixes with arms' tan? I'd love to be a sweep, now, black as Town, Yes, or a muckman. Must I be his load? O Life, Life, let me breathe,—a dug-out rat! Not worse than ours the lives rats lead— Nosing along at night down some safe rut, They find a shell-proof home before they rot. Dead men may envy living mites in cheese, Or good germs even. Microbes have their joys, And subdivide, and never come to death. Certainly flowers have the easiest time on earth. “I shall be one with nature, herb, and stone,” Shelley would tell me. Shelley would be stunned: The dullest Tommy hugs that fancy now. “Pushing up daisies,” is their creed, you know. To grain, then, go my fat, to buds my sap, For all the usefulness there is in soap. D'you think the Boche will ever stew man-soup? Some day, no doubt, if ... Friend, be very sure I shall be better off with plants that share More peaceably the meadow and the shower. Soft rains will touch me,— as they could touch once, And nothing but the sun shall make me ware. Your guns may crash around me. I'll not hear; Or, if I wince, I shall not know I wince. Don't take my soul's poor comfort for your jest. Soldiers may grow a soul when turned to fronds, But here the thing's best left at home with friends. My soul's a little grief, grappling your chest, To climb your throat on sobs; easily chased On other sighs and wiped by fresher winds. Carry my crying spirit till it's weaned To do without what blood remained these wounds.

Pathetic bright-dark, crawling with history. Leave it to the angels to judge me.  Gunfire In the distance, I keep my houselights on During the day.  No absence of memory, Please, I am only just getting started.  It Is precisely the moment to which you “adhere,” Drawing the wounds on a faded photograph. You say your deepest powers only come Once in a lifetime, you say that we blink Over ourselves.  The limit of anywhere is To forgive, and the classic metaphor for Effort stumbles at a grave.  I am looking for you Always.  This is the very moment of stepping Outside and being thrown into a glare of light.

On the Lord General Fairfax at the Siege of Colchester Fairfax, whose name in arms through Europe rings Filling each mouth with envy, or with praise, And all her jealous monarchs with amaze And rumours loud, that daunt remotest kings; Thy firm unshak'n virtue ever brings Victory home, though new rebellions raise Their hydra heads, and the false north displays Her brok'n league, to imp their serpent wings: O yet a nobler task awaits thy hand; For what can war but endless war still breed? Till Truth and Right from Violence be freed, And Public Faith clear'd from the shameful brand Of Public Fraud. In vain doth Valour bleed While Avarice and Rapine share the land.