502 War poems

There was a man. A Japanese soldier. One that did not believe in old superstitions. One that did not believe in sex before battle as charm against harm. He was an odd man. One that did not carry an amulet with pubic hair of a comfort woman. Or any piece of her. His comrades said,Be a man. The equation is, an odd man out is not man. There is no reason for logic in war. There is no reason. There was a man. His comrades said,Come raid, come pillage. Pushed him into the station. Their eyes on the holes in the wall. Watched as he came. Became. What is the equation here. There is a no equation. There was a man. One who said weeping,I am not a man, I am not a man.

Our sweet companions—sharing your bunk and your bed The versts and the versts and the versts and a hunk of your bread The wheels' endless round The rivers, streaming to ground The road. . . Oh the heavenly the Gypsy the early dawn light Remember the breeze in the morning, the steppe silver-bright Wisps of blue smoke from the rise And the song of the wise Gypsy czar. . . In the dark midnight, under the ancient trees' shroud We gave you sons as perfect as night, sons As poor as the night And the nightingale chirred Your might. . . We never stopped you, companions for marvelous hours Poverty's passions, the impoverished meals we shared The fierce bonfire's glow And there, on the carpet below, Fell stars. . .

on the wall the dense ivy of executions —ZBIGNIEW HERBERT We shall meet again, in Srinagar, by the gates of the Villa of Peace, our hands blossoming into fists till the soldiers return the keys and disappear. Again we’ll enter our last world, the first that vanished in our absence from the broken city. We’ll tear our shirts for tourniquets and bind the open thorns, warm the ivy into roses. Quick, by the pomegranate— the bird will say—Humankind can bear everything. No need to stop the ear to stories rumored in branches: We’ll hear our gardener’s voice, the way we did as children, clear under trees he’d planted: “It’s true, my death, at the mosque entrance, in the massacre, when the Call to Prayer opened the floodgates”—Quick, follow the silence— “and dawn rushed into everyone’s eyes.” Will we follow the horned lark, pry open the back gate into the poplar groves, go past the search post into the cemetery, the dust still uneasy on hurried graves with no names, like all new ones in the city? “It’s true” (we’ll hear our gardener again). “That bird is silent all winter. Its voice returns in spring, a plaintive cry. That’s when it saw the mountain falcon rip open, in mid-air, the blue magpie, then carry it, limp from the talons.” Pluck the blood: My words will echo thus at sunset, by the ivy, but to what purpose? In the drawer of the cedar stand, white in the verandah, we’ll find letters: When the post offices died, the mailman knew we’d return to answer them. Better if he’d let them speed to death, blacked out by Autumn’s Press Trust not like this, taking away our breath, holding it with love’s anonymous scripts: “See how your world has cracked. Why aren’t you here? Where are you? Come back. Is history deaf there, across the oceans?” Quick, the bird will say. And we’ll try the keys, with the first one open the door into the drawing room. Mirror after mirror, textiled by dust, will blind us to our return as we light oil lamps. The glass map of our country, still on the wall, will tear us to lace— We’ll go past our ancestors, up the staircase, holding their wills against our hearts. Their wish was we return—forever!—and inherit(Quick, the bird will say) that to which we belong, not like this— to get news of our death after the world’s. (for Suvir Kaul)

Now, God be thanked who has matched us with his hour, And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping! With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power, To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping, Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary; Leave the sick hearts that honor could not move, And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary, And all the little emptiness of love! Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there, Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending, Naught broken save this body, lost but breath; Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there, But only agony, and that has ending; And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.

hate the people of this village and would nail our hats to our heads for refusing in their presence to remove them or staple our hands to our foreheads for refusing to salute them if we did not hurt them first: mail them packages of rats, mix their flour at night with broken glass. We do this, they do that. They peel the larynx from one of our brothers’ throats. We devein one of their sisters. The quicksand pits they built were good. Our amputation teams were better. We trained some birds to steal their wheat. They sent to us exploding ambassadors of peace. They do this, we do that. We canceled our sheep imports. They no longer bought our blankets. We mocked their greatest poet and when that had no effect we parodied the way they dance which did cause pain, so they, in turn, said our God was leprous, hairless. We do this, they do that. Ten thousand (10,000) years, ten thousand (10,000) brutal, beautiful years.

(To Two Scots Lads) Lying in dug-outs, joking idly, wearily; Watching the candle guttering in the draught; Hearing the great shells go high over us, eerily Singing; how often have I turned over, and laughed With pity and pride, photographs of all colours, All sizes, subjects: khaki brothers in France; Or mother's faces worn with countless dolours; Or girls whose eyes were challenging and must dance, Though in a picture only, a common cheap Ill-taken card; and children—frozen, some (Babies) waiting on Dicky-bird to peep Out of the handkerchief that is his home (But he's so shy!). And some with bright looks, calling Delight across the miles of land and sea, That not the dread of barrage suddenly falling Could quite blot out—not mud nor lethargy. Smiles and triumphant careless laughter. O The pain of them, wide Earth's most sacred things! Lying in dug-outs, hearing the great shells slow Sailing mile-high, the heart mounts higher and sings. But once—O why did he keep that bitter token Of a dead Love?—that boy, who, suddenly moved, Showed me, his eyes wet, his low talk broken, A girl who better had not been beloved.

“All quiet along the Potomac,” they say, “Except, now and then, a stray picket Is shot as he walks on his beat to and fro, By a rifleman hid in the thicket. ’Tis nothing—a private or two, now and then, Will not count in the news of the battle; Not an officer lost—only one of the men Moaning out, all alone, his death-rattle.” *    *    *    *    *    * All quiet along the Potomac to-night, Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming; Their tents, in the rays of the clear autumn moon Or the light of the watch-fire, are gleaming. A tremulous sigh, as the gentle night-wind Through the forest-leaves softly is creeping; While stars up above, with their glittering eyes, Keep guard—for the army is sleeping. There’s only the sound of the lone sentry’s tread, As he tramps from the rock to the fountain, And thinks of the two in the low trundle-bed Far away in the cot on the mountain. His musket falls slack—his face, dark and grim, Grows gentle with memories tender, As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep— For their mother—may Heaven defend her! The moon seems to shine just as brightly as then, That night, when the love yet unspoken Leaped up to his lips—when low-murmured vows Were pledged to be ever unbroken. Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his eyes, He dashes off tears that are welling, And gathers his gun closer up to its place, As if to keep down the heart-swelling. He passes the fountain, the blasted pine-tree, The footstep is lagging and weary; Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of light, Toward the shade of the forest so dreary. Hark! was it the night-wind that rustled the leaves? Was it moonlight so suddenly flashing? It looked life a rifle—“Ha! Mary, good-by!” And the life-blood is ebbing and plashing. All quiet along the Potomac to-night, No sound save the rush of the river; While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead— The picket’s off duty forever!

“No one cares less than I, Nobody knows but God, Whether I am destined to lie Under a foreign clod,” Were the words I made to the bugle call in the morning. But laughing, storming, scorning, Only the bugles know What the bugles say in the morning, And they do not care, when they blow The call that I heard and made words to early this morning.

These ghost soldiers live underground with the vast oversupply of castoff lanterns. If one were to take broadsword to one of these orange-bearded mammoth men of rough hew, he would laugh at the passing metal, make light of entrails. For years I have been here without a clear map. That hopes should dim as days go on above is natural I suppose, what do I know? I am dressed like one of them. The thick walls quake but stay soundproof. I fear my fists vestigial. These soldiers’ own panic is taking up rugs finding filigrees of the former world beneath, e.g., a locket with their mongrel’s mush. They will freeze, then feign noncom; smacking barrels of burgundy with pistol butts. I react comme squirrel: fleeing their reach to the chamber out of the impact area. One loved me until I asked if he worried about what must be happening without us. Well, his lips did narrow, hand abandoned my knee, blah, blah big mouth were his departing words. I will not say with shame that I came from nothing. Someone paved my first breakthrough at least, one time calling it love. And I will stand by that as it applies to my primary makeup.

Miami Beach: wartime Imagine or remember how the road at last led us Over bridges like prepositions, linking a drawl of islands. The coast curved away like a question mark, listening slyly And shyly whispered the insomniac Atlantic. But we were uncertain of both question and answer, Stiff and confused and bemused in expendable khaki, Seeing with innocent eyes, the walls gleaming, And the alabaster city of a rich man’s dream. Borne by the offshore wind, an exciting rumor, The legend of tropic islands, caresses the coast like hysteria, Bringing a sound like bells rung under sea; And brings the infected banker and others whose tenure Is equally uncertain, equally certain: the simple And perfect faces of women—like the moon Whose radiance is disturbing and quite as impersonal: Not to be warmed by and never ample. They linger awhile in the dazzling sepulchral city, Delicately exploring their romantic diseases, The gangster, the capitalist and their proteg