502 War poems

*     * *     * The third arrow flew upward and stuck we rode back sun birds bedeviled the great stem its reflected words fast thunder hills a molten mass small clouds of stones green rushes waylaid spirits onto lava beds post removed stone broken face turned down to earth *    * *    * I dropped out the little hangnail blanket of a door sun strapped to my back so everyone could feel I was sinking *    * *    * I dried out woke up sprouted wings and flew away *    * Looking Glass is dead The circular blue paper is the sky We see some green spots which are pleasing Are the commissioners clear as I am? I gave them a blue flag which they pretended to cherish I live in hopes I do not have two hearts The Illinois River will rise A single warrior to write beyond without me Death at the hands of the long guns Did I say death? Or the springs are drying up? Find the break where blood runs clear Through the love you bear your gallant little band *    * “Not to reverse history but to draw out the strength” * Write in the corridor to be no speaking Sing in the hall to be no dancing Cry in the street to be no leading Break into the house to be no sleeping Feel in the closet to be no running Fight in the dome to be no screaming Lie down in the dark to be no changing *    * Are the commissioners clear as I am? The dampness of night pierces my shield. Two dead men push a stick through my buttonhole. The sun looks down on me as complete. I want you to look and smile — red with iron black. With all of my heart I thank my black-robed friends for their kindness. Columns of steel rise. I was glad to hear the black robes had given you this shimmer of elongated nights, left to waver in the void. They know how to die in battle. They are a twist in the black mirror, that river between the city and the mist. We will produce no sane men again. They come back different and the same. They roam over hills and plains and wish the heavens would fall. You issued the first soldiers and we only answered back, seeking air. I have sent many words that were drowned along the way. The wind is full of bottles and the air aggressive, a red feather placed into black hair. * Joy Harjo in a 1989 interview with Lewis MacAdams

This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors Many a frosty night, and merrily Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores: 'At Mrs Greenland's Hawthorn Bush,' said he, 'I slept.' None knew which bush. Above the town, Beyond 'The Drover', a hundred spot the down In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps More sound in France—that, too, he secret keeps.

It lists beneath a sycamore swashing in high summer leaf, and takes a hit from underneath: a root knuckle bulges along the floor. Its eight loopholes have fissures, sprouting thistles; through each the wheat is fattening. “What’s this thing for?” A starling sings its wind-up song. The sun slides out. And this taste of piss, that Fetherlite slumped in the corner, those Holsten cans, the markered slogan do not try to answer. Might.

1. It wasn’t over a woman that war began, but it’s better To see it this way, my myth professor loved to say, a man From the South rumored to extort the bodies of college girls Into higher grades. My girlfriend of the time told me so — He was a creep, she Got an A in the class and liked his joke about religion As self-mutilation, it was Ramadan then and, O Helen, I was fasting. I lie awake in a desert night east Of the Atlantic on the verge of rain, the catapulted grains Of sand on hot zinc roof, the rustle of leaves, the flap Of peeling bark on trees whose names I do not know, and where Would I find a botany guide here. Water flowed Like a river from the Jabal once. There were elephant pools, alligator Streams, and a pond for the devil to speak in human tongues. All desiccant names now after an earthquake Shuffled the ground decades ago. It will rain soon, I’m assured, since nothing has stopped The birds from migration. All the look-alikes Are already here: the stork, the heron. The white flying flowers, the ibis, and the one That aesthetizes you more.

October 18, 1914 I dreamt that people from the Land of Chimes Arrived one autumn morning with their bells, To hoist them on the towers and citadels Of my own country, that the musical rhymes Rung by them into space at meted times Amid the market's daily stir and stress, And the night's empty star-lit silentness, Might solace souls of this and kindred climes. Then I awoke; and lo, before me stood The visioned ones, but pale and full of fear; From Bruges they came, and Antwerp, and Ostend, No carillons in their train. Foes of mad mood Had shattered these to shards amid the gear Of ravaged roof, and smouldering gable-end.

When the collie saw the child break from the crowd, he gave chase, and since they both were border-crossers, they left this world. We were then made of— affronted by—silence. The train passed Poste 5, Paris, late arrival, no luck, no enlarging commentary magnified in any glass. “The ineffable is everywhere in language” the speaker had said in the huge hall where I sat amongst coughers, students, in the late February of that year, at the end of a sinuous inquiry on sense and sound— “and very close to the ground,” he’d said. Like mist risen above the feet of animals in a far field north of here.

Toll for the brave— The brave! that are no more: All sunk beneath the wave, Fast by their native shore. Eight hundred of the brave, Whose courage well was tried, Had made the vessel heel And laid her on her side; A land-breeze shook the shrouds, And she was overset; Down went the Royal George, With all her crew complete. Toll for the brave— Brave Kempenfelt is gone, His last sea-fight is fought, His work of glory done. It was not in the battle, No tempest gave the shock, She sprang no fatal leak, She ran upon no rock; His sword was in the sheath, His fingers held the pen, When Kempenfelt went down With twice four hundred men. Weigh the vessel up, Once dreaded by our foes, And mingle with your cup The tears that England owes; Her timbers yet are sound, And she may float again, Full charg'd with England's thunder, And plough the distant main; But Kempenfelt is gone, His victories are o'er; And he and his eight hundred Must plough the wave no more.

Where you've fallen, you will stay. In the whole universe this one and only place is the sole place which you have made your very own. The country runs away from you. House, mill, poplar—every thing is struggling with you here, as if in nothingness mutating. But now it's you who won't give up. Did we fleece you? You've grown rich. Did we blind you? You watch us still. You bear witness without speech.

(1916) I I found a dreadful acre of the dead, Marked with the only sign on earth that saves. The wings of death were hurrying overhead, The loose earth shook on those unquiet graves; For the deep gun-pits, with quick stabs of flame, Made their own thunders of the sunlit air; Yet, as I read the crosses, name by name, Rank after rank, it seemed that peace was there; Sunlight and peace, a peace too deep for thought, The peace of tides that underlie our strife, The peace with which the moving heavens are fraught, The peace that is our everlasting life. The loose earth shook. The very hills were stirred. The silence of the dead was all I heard. II We, who lie here, have nothing more to pray. To all your praises we are deaf and blind. We may not ever know if you betray Our hope, to make earth better for mankind. Only our silence, in the night, shall grow More silent, as the stars grow in the sky; And, while you deck our graves, you shall not know How many scornful legions pass you by. For we have heard you say (when we were living) That some small dream of good would “cost too much.” But when the foe struck, we have watched you giving, And seen you move the mountains with one touch. What can be done, we know. But, have no fear! If you fail now, we shall not see or hear.

The television in The Deer Hunter is in Clairton, Pennsylvania. Everything is still at Welsh’s Lounge: the clouds, the sky, the unlit neon sign outside the window. All is calm, all is bright. I sing in English while my father is in Vietnam. American wives are in immeasurable pain and so is my mother. American soldiers are pushing a hel- icopter to the right side of the TV screen. Behind the soldiers is number 19. It stands for USS Hancock: its nickname, Fighting Hannah. Helicopter whirring. It sounds like Godzilla crying. My father is nowhere to be seen because he’s behind the camera, behind the lens. His eye’s filled with the green ocean. It zooms in on the soldiers, some in uniform, some shirtless, on the decks with number 19 behind them. They’re calm and bright, looking down at the flight platform below. Nobody is crying. Num- ber 19 goes beyond Yi Sang’s number 13. History is hysterical. The-13th-child-also- says-it’s-terrifying. 13+3+3. 19=13. A modest, shared hallucination. I’m still the 13th child. And Godzilla is still crying. Hannah ditches the helicopter in the sea. Now everything is happening on the left side of the screen. Nobody’s in the cockpit of the helicopter. The chopper blades tilt, making a diagonal line across the entire screen. That strange cry. It wants to go home—O like me, like my father. Now the helicopter and its blades are perfectly vertical to the South China Sea. The chopper is now engulfed by the sea, white with foam. Sayonara, Saigon! THIS SEEMS TO BE THE LAST CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN INVOLVEMENT IN VIET- NAM. Now everything appears in the center of the screen. Helicopter is everything. Hannah is everything. My father’s framing never sways even when flowers call to him. He edits as he films, he often told me. He’s still nowhere to be seen. Missing in action somewhere in Cambodia, filming carpet bombing, my mother said. O the chopper’s belly convulses. O it’s in immeasurable pain. The chopper’s door open and the pilot and men in white shirts and dark pants spill out. IT’S ALSO BEEN THE LARGEST SINGLE MOVEMENT OF PEOPLE IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICA IT- SELF. The chopper’s blades are swirling in every frenzied direction. O suicidal lines. Sayonara, Saigon! HILARY BROWN, ABC NEWS ABOARD THE ATTACK AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS HANCOCK IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA. White with foam. Now I see buttons on History's blouse.