502 War poems

Great soldier of the fighting clan, Across Port Arthur's frowning face of stone You drew the battle sword of old Japan, And struck the White Tsar from his Asian throne. Once more the samurai sword Struck to the carved hilt in your loyal hand, That not alone your heaven-descended lord Should meanly wander in the spirit land. Your own proud way, O eastern star, Grandly at last you followed. Out it leads To that high heaven where all the heroes are, Lovers of death for causes and for creeds.

We shall not come again, not to this wet and summer day, nor to the waylaid place where you laid waste to me and I to you, and where we reminisced recalling who did what to whom. We shall not come again. Not to the bed we thrashed nor to the memory of the way I brushed my hair back, nights, nor to the air we dared to share to breathe, or couldn’t quite. We shall not come again. No more, my face seen round your corner, or your briefcase found beneath my table. We weren’t able, apt or sane. We shall not come again. Nor cry nor clutch, not even once again. We shall not cover up in quilts or bear the beast of one another’s guilts or sit in silences made saddest by what

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When the gods you don’t believe In drag you out of your comfortable Life and kick your ass long enough And hard enough to make you Question your serene acceptance Of emptiness as the obligatory tyrant Whose lack of moral concern is Responsible for your largess— It’s time to wake up—take off The bedroom slippers—put on the Mud boots and go clean the stall So the horses’ feet don’t rot— Ride away with a gentle agreement On your tongue that if loosed would Sound like an apology but stuck as it is Between molars is more like a curse Chomped by inaction into an antidote For clarity—the steam of a promise swabbed From the smithy of cold eyes. Be kind—love what you see—or go To sleep and stop dreaming you’re one of us.

In the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow-lands Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands. Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song, Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng: Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold, Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old; And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme, That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every clime. In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron band, Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde's hand; On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days Sat the poet Melchior singing Kaiser Maximilian's praise. Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous world of Art: Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in the common mart; And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone, By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own. In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust, And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust; In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a pix of sculpture rare, Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air. Here, when Art was still religion, with a simple, reverent heart, Lived and labored Albrecht Dürer, the Evangelist of Art; Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand, Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land. Emigravit is the inscription on the tomb-stone where he lies; Dead he is not, but departed, — for the artist never dies. Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair, That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air! Through these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes, Walked of yore the Mastersingers, chanting rude poetic strains. From remote and sunless suburbs came they to the friendly guild, Building nests in Fame's great temple, as in spouts the swallows build. As the weaver plied the shuttle, wove he too the mystic rhyme, And the smith his iron measures hammered to the anvil's chime; Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom makes the flowers of poesy bloom In the forge's dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom. Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, laureate of the gentle craft, Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laughed. But his house is now an ale-house, with a nicely sanded floor, And a garland in the window, and his face above the door; Painted by some humble artist, as in Adam Puschman's song, As the old man gray and dove-like, with his great beard white and long. And at night the swart mechanic comes to drown his cark and care, Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the master's antique chair. Vanished is the ancient splendor, and before my dreamy eye Wave these mingled shapes and figures, like a faded tapestry. Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world's regard; But thy painter, Albrecht Dürer, and Hans Sachs thy cobbler bard. Thus, O Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region far away, As he paced thy streets and court-yards, sang in thought his careless lay: Gathering from the pavement's crevice, as a floweret of the soil, The nobility of labor, — the long pedigree of toil.

In the beginning, in the wet Warm dark place, Straining to break out, clawing at strange cables Hearing her screams, laughing “Later we forgave ourselves, we didn’t know” Some secret jazz Shouted,wait, don’t go. Impatient, we came running, innocent Laughing blobs of blood & faith. To this mother, father world Where laughter seems out of place So we learned to cry, pleased They pronounce human. The secret Jazz blew a sigh Some familiar sound shouted wait Some are evil, some will hate. “Just Jazz, blowing its top again” So we rushed & laughed. As we pushed & grabbed While jazz blew in the night Suddenly they were too busy to hear a simple sound They were busy shoving mud in men’s mouths, Who were busy dying on the living ground Busy earning medals, for killing children on deserted street corners Occupying their fathers, raping their mothers, busy humans we Busy burning Japanese in atomicolorcinemascope With stereophonic screams, What one hundred per cent red blooded savage, would waste precious time Listening to jazz, with so many important things going on But even the fittest murderers must rest So they sat down in our blood soaked garments, and listened to jazz lost, steeped in all our death dreams They were shocked at the sound of life, long gone from our own They were indignant at the whistling, thinking, singing, beating, swinging, They wept for it, hugged, kissed it, loved it, joined it, we drank it, Smoked it, ate with it, slept with it They made our girls wear it for lovemaking Instead of silly lace gowns, Now in those terrible moments, when the dark memories come The secret moments to which we admit no one When guiltily we crawl back in time, reaching away from ourselves They hear a familiar sound, Jazz, scratching, digging, blueing, swinging jazz, And listen, And feel, & die.

We boys, the neighborhood’s barefoot We boys, the neighborhood’s naked We boys of stomachs bloated from eating mud We boys of teeth porous from eating dates and pumpkin rind We boys will line up from Hassan al-Basri’s mausoleum to the Ashar River’s source to meet you in the morning waving green palm fronds We will cry out: Long Live We will cry out: Live to Eternity And we will hear the music of Scottish bagpipes, gladly Sometimes we will laugh at an Indian soldier’s beard but fear will merge with our laughs, and dispute them We cry out: Long Live We cry out: Live to Eternity and reach our hands toward you: Give us bread We the hungry, starving since our birth in this village Give us meat, chewing gum, cans, and fish Give us, so no mother expels her child so that we do not eat mud and sleep We boys, the neighborhood’s barefoot do not know from where you had come or why you had come or why we cry out: Long Live ............................... And now we ask: will you stay long? And will we go on reaching our hands toward you? London, December 3, 2002

1. God love you now, if no one else will ever, Corpse in the paddy, or dead on a high hill In the fine and ruinous summer of a war You never wanted. All your false flags were Of bravery and ignorance, like grade school maps: Colors of countries you would never see— Until that weekend in eternity When, laughing, well armed, perfectly ready to kill The world and your brother, the safe commanders sent You into your future. Oh, dead on a hill, Dead in a paddy, leeched and tumbled to A tomb of footnotes. We mourn a changeling: you: Handselled to poverty and drummed to war By distinguished masters whom you never knew. 2. The bee that spins his metal from the sun, The shy mole drifting like a miner ghost Through midnight earth—all happy creatures run As strict as trains on rails the circuits of Blind instinct. Happy in your summer follies, You mined a culture that was mined for war: The state to mold you, church to bless, and always The elders to confirm you in your ignorance. No scholar put your thinking cap on nor Warned that in dead seas fishes died in schools Before inventing legs to walk the land. The rulers stuck a tennis racket in your hand, An Ark against the flood. In time of change Courage is not enough: the blind mole dies, And you on your hill, who did not know the rules. 3. Wet in the windy counties of the dawn The lone crow skirls his draggled passage home: And God (whose sparrows fall aslant his gaze, Like grace or confetti) blinks and he is gone, And you are gone. Your scarecrow valor grows And rusts like early lilac while the rose Blooms in Dakota and the stock exchange Flowers. Roses, rents, all things conspire To crown your death with wreaths of living fire. And the public mourners come: the politic tear Is cast in the Forum. But, in another year, We will mourn you, whose fossil courage fills The limestone histories: brave: ignorant: amazed: Dead in the rice paddies, dead on the nameless hills.

(To have been read before the statue of Lafayette and Washington in Paris, on Decoration Day, May 30, 1916) I Ay, it is fitting on this holiday, Commemorative of our soldier dead, When—with sweet flowers of our New England May Hiding the lichened stones by fifty years made gray— Their graves in every town are garlanded, That pious tribute should be given too To our intrepid few Obscurely fallen here beyond their seas. Those to preserve their country's greatness died; But by the death of these Something that we can look upon with pride Has been achieved, nor wholly unreplied Can sneerers triumph in the charge they make That from a war where Freedom was at stake America withheld and, daunted, stood aside. II Be they remembered here with each reviving spring, Not only that in May, when life is loveliest, Around Neuville-Saint-Vaast and the disputed crest Of Vimy, they, superb, unfaltering, In that fine onslaught that no fire could halt, Parted impetuous to their first assault; But that they brought fresh hearts and springlike too To that high mission, and 'tis meet to strew With twigs of lilac and spring's earliest rose The cenotaph of those Who in the cause that history most endears Fell in the sunny morn and flower of their young years. III Yet sought they neither recompense nor praise, Nor to be mentioned in another breath Than their blue-coated comrades whose great days It was their pride to share—ay, share even to the death! Nay, rather, France, to you they rendered thanks (Seeing they came for honour, not for gain), Who, opening to them your glorious ranks, Gave them that grand occasion to excel, That chance to live the life most free from stain And that rare privilege of dying well. IV O friends! I know not since that war began From which no people nobly stands aloof If in all moments we have given proof Of virtues that were thought American. I know not if in all things done and said All has been well and good, Or of each one of us can hold his head As proudly as he should, Or, from the pattern of those mighty dead Whose shades our country venerates to-day, If we 've not somewhat fallen and somewhat gone astray, But you to whom our land's good name is dear, If there be any here Who wonder if her manhood be decreased, Relaxed its sinews and its blood less red Than that at Shiloh and Antietam shed, Be proud of these, have joy in this at least, And cry: Now heaven be praised That in that hour that most imperilled her, Menaced her liberty who foremost raised Europe's bright flag of freedom, some there were Who, not unmindful of the antique debt, Came back the generous path of Lafayette; And when of a most formidable foe She checked each onset, arduous to stem— Foiled and frustrated them— On those red fields where blow with furious blow Was countered, whether the gigantic fray Rolled by the Meuse or at the Bois Sabot, Accents of ours were in the fierce mêlée; And on those furthest rims of hallowed ground Where the forlorn, the gallant charge expires, When the slain bugler has long ceased to sound, And on the tangled wires The last wild rally staggers, crumbles, stops, Withered beneath the shrapnel's iron showers:— Now heaven be thanked, we gave a few brave drops; Now heaven be thanked, a few brave drops were ours.' V There, holding still, in frozen steadfastness, Their bayonets toward the beckoning frontiers, They lie—our comrades—lie among their peers, Clad in the glory of fallen warriors, Grim clustered under thorny trellises, Dry, furthest foam upon disastrous shores, Leaves that made last year beautiful, still strewn Even as they fell, unchanged, beneath the changing moon; And earth in her divine indifference Rolls on, and many paltry things and mean Prate to be heard and caper to be seen. But they are silent, clam; their eloquence Is that incomparable attitude; No human presences their witness are, But summer clouds and sunset crimson-hued, And showers and night winds and the northern star Nay, even our salutations seem profane, Opposed to their Elysian quietude; Our salutations calling from afar, From our ignobler plane And undistinction of our lesser parts: Hail, brothers, and farewell; you are twice blest, brave hearts. Double your glory is who perished thus, For you have died for France and vindicated us.

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