502 War poems

The curve of her hip where I’d lay my head, that’s what I’m thinking of now, her fingers gone slow through my hair on a blue day ten thousand miles off in the future somewhere, where the beer is so cold it sweats in your hand, cool as her kissing you with crushed ice, her tongue wet with blackberry and melon. That’s what I’m thinking of now. Because I’m all out of adrenaline, all out of smoking incendiaries. Somewhere deep in the landscape of the brain, under the skull’s blue curving dome— that’s where I am now, swaying in a hammock by the water’s edge as soldiers laugh and play volleyball just down the beach, while others tan and talk with the nurses who bring pills to help them sleep. And if this is crazy, then let this be my sanatorium, let the doctors walk among us here marking their charts as they will. I have a lover with hair that falls like autumn leaves on my skin. Water that rolls in smooth and cool as anesthesia. Birds that carry all my bullets into the barrel of the sun.

Thousands of planes were flying and then they stopped. We spend days moving our eyes across makeshift desks, we sit on a makeshift floor; we prepare for almost nothing that might happen. Early on, distant relations kept calling. Now, nothing: sound of water tippling a seawall. Nothing: sparks lighting the brush, sparks polishing the hail, the flotsam of cars left standing perfectly still. Thud of night bird against night air, there you are on the porch, swath of feathers visible through the glass, there you are on the stairs where the cat fell like a stone because her heart stopped. What have you found in the wind above town square? Is it true that even the statues have gone? Is there really a hush over everything as there used to be in morning when one by one we took off our veils?

From the Mithridatic Wars,  first century BC Our general was elsewhere, but we drowned. While he rested, he shipped us home with the bulk of  his spoils that had weighed his army down. The thrashing storm that caught us cracked the hulls and made us offerings to the sea floor — a rain of statues, gold, and men. Released from service, done with war, the crash and hiss muted, we fell through streams of creatures whose lives were their purpose. We settled with treasure looted from temples of rubbled Athenian Greece; among us, bronze and marble gods and goddesses moored without grace, dodged by incurious fish. Their power was never meant to buoy us — our pleasures were incidental gifts — but, shaken by their radiance in our dust, we had given them our voices. Their faces, wings, and limbs lie here with our sanded bones and motionless devices. Little crabs attempt to don rings set with agate and amethyst, and many an octopus, seeking an hour of rest, finds shelter in our brain-cases. So we are still of use.

When my older brother came back from war he had on his forehead a little silver star and under the star an abyss a splinter of shrapnel hit him at Verdun or perhaps at Grünwald (he’d forgotten the details) he used to talk much in many languages but he liked most of all the language of history until losing breath he commanded his dead pals to run Roland Kowaski Hannibal he shouted that this was the last crusade that Carthage soon would fall and then sobbing confessed that Napoleon did not like him we looked at him getting paler and paler abandoned by his senses he turned slowly into a monument into musical shells of ears entered a stone forest and the skin of his face was secured with the blind dry buttons of eyes nothing was left him but touch what stories he told with his hands in the right he had romances in the left soldier’s memories they took my brother and carried him out of town he returns every fall slim and very quiet he does not want to come in he knocks at the window for me we walk together in the streets and he recites to me improbable tales touching my face with blind fingers of rain

The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung And cut a flower beside a ground bird's nest Before it stained a single human breast. The stricken flower bent double and so hung. And still the bird revisited her young. A butterfly its fall had dispossessed A moment sought in air his flower of rest, Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung. On the bare upland pasture there had spread O'ernight 'twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread And straining cables wet with silver dew. A sudden passing bullet shook it dry. The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly, But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew.

The art of war teaches us to rely not on the chance of the enemy not attacking but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable. —Sun Tzu My father called me a chink so I’d know how to receive it. So I wouldn’t be surprised. Therefore the good soldier will be terrible in his onset and prompt in his decision. In the wall, I bricked up my secret. So it would gush forth. I did this for effect. So you would know me. On the day of battle your soldiers might weep bedewing their garments. But it grew like a bullet loving its flowerstain. It happened nonetheless. But let them at once be brought to bay. Because you are simply my medic watching me. I’m a poem someone else wrote for me. All of the characters “beautiful and flawed.” When we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far. My sister said, you can forget our way of life? I said yes and was annoyed. She ran away and I was desperate for her. I was screaming into the mindspeaker. When far away, we must make him believe we are near. I said, Christine, christine, christine.

(Hindenburg Line, April 1917) Groping along the tunnel, step by step, He winked his prying torch with patching glare From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air. Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes and too vague to know; A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed; And he, exploring fifty feet below The rosy gloom of battle overhead. Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw someone lie Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug. And stooped to give the sleeper’s arm a tug. “I’m looking for headquarters.” No reply. “God blast your neck!” (For days he’d had no sleep.) “Get up and guide me through this stinking place.” Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap, And flashed his beam across the livid face Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore Agony dying hard of ten days before; And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound. Alone he staggered on until he found Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair To the dazed, muttering creatures underground Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound. At last, with sweat and horror in his hair, He climbed through darkness to the twilight air, Unloading hell behind him step by step.

1897 God of our fathers, known of old, Lord of our far-flung battle-line, Beneath whose awful Hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine— Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget! The tumult and the shouting dies; The Captains and the Kings depart: Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget! Far-called, our navies melt away; On dune and headland sinks the fire: Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget! If, drunk with sight of power, we loose Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe, Such boastings as the Gentiles use, Or lesser breeds without the Law— Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget! For heathen heart that puts her trust In reeking tube and iron shard, All valiant dust that builds on dust, And guarding, calls not Thee to guard, For frantic boast and foolish word— Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!

Darkness: the rain sluiced down; the mire was deep; It was past twelve on a mid-winter night, When peaceful folk in beds lay snug asleep; There, with much work to do before the light, We lugged our clay-sucked boots as best we might Along the trench; sometimes a bullet sang, And droning shells burst with a hollow bang; We were soaked, chilled and wretched, every one; Darkness; the distant wink of a huge gun. I turned in the black ditch, loathing the storm; A rocket fizzed and burned with blanching flare, And lit the face of what had been a form Floundering in mirk. He stood before me there; I say that He was Christ; stiff in the glare, And leaning forward from His burdening task, Both arms supporting it; His eyes on mine Stared from the woeful head that seemed a mask Of mortal pain in Hell’s unholy shine. No thorny crown, only a woollen cap He wore—an English soldier, white and strong, Who loved his time like any simple chap, Good days of work and sport and homely song; Now he has learned that nights are very long, And dawn a watching of the windowed sky. But to the end, unjudging, he’ll endure Horror and pain, not uncontent to die That Lancaster on Lune may stand secure. He faced me, reeling in his weariness, Shouldering his load of planks, so hard to bear. I say that He was Christ, who wrought to bless All groping things with freedom bright as air, And with His mercy washed and made them fair. Then the flame sank, and all grew black as pitch, While we began to struggle along the ditch; And someone flung his burden in the muck, Mumbling: ‘O Christ Almighty, now I’m stuck!’

The great pulsation passed. Glass lay around me Resurrected from the end. I walked Along streets of slate-jabbering houses, Against an acrid cloud of dust, I saw The houses kneel, revealed each in its abject Prayer, my prayer as well: 'Oh God, Spare me the lot that is my neighbour's.' Then, in the upper sky, indifferent to our Sulphurous nether hell, I saw The dead of the bombed graveyard, a calm tide Under the foam of stars above the town. And on the roof-tops there stood London prophets Saints of Covent Garden, Parliament Hill Fields, Hampstead, Hyde Park Corner, Saint John's Wood, Crying aloud in cockney fanatic voices: 'In the midst of Life is Death!' They kneeled And prayed against the misery manufactured In mines and ships and mills, against The greed of merchants, vanity of priests. They sang: 'We souls from the abyss To whom the stars are fields of flowers, Tell you: Rejoice in the abyss! For hollow is the skull, the vacuum In the gold ball, St Paul's gold cross. Unless you will accept the emptiness Within the bells of foxgloves and cathedrals, Each life must feed upon the deaths of others, The shamelessly entreating prayer Of every house will be that it is spared Calamity that strikes its neighbour.'