502 War poems

“Now, tell me one difference,” my sister says, “between Old English and New English.” Well, Old English has a word for our kind of people:ofermod, literally “overmind,” or “overheart,” or “overspirit,” often translated “overproud.” When the warrior Byrhtnoth, overfool, invited the Vikings across the ford at Maldon to fight his smaller troop at closer range, his overpride proved deadlier than the gold-hilted and file-hard swords the poet gleefully describes — and aren’t we like that, high-strung and ofermod as our daddy and granddaddies and everybody else in our stiff-necked mountain town, always with something stupid to prove, doing 80 all the way to the head of the holler, weaving through the double lines; splinting a door-slammed finger with popsicle sticks and electrical tape; not filling out the forms for food stamps though we know we qualify. Sister, I’ve seen you cuss rivals, teachers, doctors, bill collectors, lawyers, cousins, strangers at the red light or the Walmart; you start it, you finish it, you everything-in-between-it, whether it’s with your fists, or a two-by-four, or a car door, and it doesn’t matter that your foe’s stronger, taller, better armed. I don’t tell a soul when I’m down to flour and tuna and a half-bag of beans, so you’ve not seen me do without just to do without, just for spite at them who told us, “It’s a sin to be beholden.” If you’re Byrhtnoth lying gutted on the ground, speechifying at the troops he’s doomed, then I’m the idiot campaigner fighting beside his hacked-up lord instead of turning tail, insisting, “Mind must be the harder, heart the keener, spirit the greater, as our strength lessens.” Now, don’t that sound familiar? We’ve bought it all our lives as it’s been sold by drunkards, bruisers, goaders, soldiers, braggers with a single code: you might be undermined, girl, but don’t you never be undermod.

often when he was advancing feeling his way in the night he was doubtful rebelled wanted to climb back up to the old light but a force held him enjoined him to pursue to venture once more once again into the thickest darkness of his shadow one day at the height of his distress emptied of all force driven to see that the inaccessible would not yield he admitted that he must renounce it to his great surprise without his having to take a single step he crossed the threshold came into the light

I think it better that in times like these A poet's mouth be silent, for in truth We have no gift to set a statesman right; He has had enough of meddling who can please A young girl in the indolence of her youth, Or an old man upon a winter’s night.

Fate piles up On the bloody Norman shore. If you must swim there Swim on your back.

Snow is a strange white word; No ice or frost Have asked of bud or bird For Winter's cost. Yet ice and frost and snow From earth to sky This Summer land doth know, No man knows why. In all men's hearts it is. Some spirit old Hath turned with malign kiss Our lives to mould. Red fangs have torn His face. God's blood is shed. He mourns from His lone place His children dead. O! ancient crimson curse! Corrode, consume. Give back this universe Its pristine bloom. (Cape Town, 1914)

Ground zero refers to the detonation point Of a bomb of any size, from one strapped To the waist, to the Fat Man, to the Massive Ordinance Air Burst. Like the Daisy Cutter, The M.O.A.B. explodes just above the ashen clay To insure that it spreads its sentiment sideways.

In a strange house, a strange bed in a strange town, a very strange me is waiting for you. Now it is very early in the morning. The silence is loud. The baby is walking about with his foaming bottle, making strange sounds and deciding, after all, to be my friend. You arrive tonight. How dull time is! How empty—and yet, since I am sitting here, lying here, walking up and down here, waiting, I see that time's cruel ability to make one wait is time's reality. I see your hair which I call red. I lie here in this bed. Someone teased me once, a friend of ours — saying that I saw your hair red because I was not thinking of the hair on your head. Someone also told me, a long time ago: my father said to me, It is a terrible thing, son, to fall into the hands of the living God.

I gave you sorrow to hang on your wall Like a calendar in one color. I wear a torn place on my sleeve. It isn’t as simple as that. Between no place of mine and no place of yours You’d have thought I’d know the way by now Just from thinking it over. Oh I know I’ve no excuse to be stuck here turning Like a mirror on a string, Except it’s hardly credible how It all keeps changing. Loss has a wider choice of directions Than the other thing. As if I had a system I shuffle among the lies Turning them over, if only I could be sure what I’d lost. I uncover my footprints, I Poke them till the eyes open. They don’t recall what it looked like. When was I using it last? Was it like a ring or a light Or the autumn pond Which chokes and glitters but Grows colder? It could be all in the mind.  Anyway Nothing seems to bring it back to me. And I’ve been to see Your hands as trees borne away on a flood, The same film over and over, And an old one at that, shattering its account To the last of the digits, and nothing And the blank end. The lightning has shown me the scars of the future. I’ve had a long look at someone Alone like a key in a lock Without what it takes to turn. It isn’t as simple as that. Winter will think back to your lit harvest For which there is no help, and the seed Of eloquence will open its wings When you are gone. But at this moment When the nails are kissing the fingers good-bye And my only Chance is bleeding from me, When my one chance is bleeding, For speaking either truth or comfort I have no more tongue than a wound.

phlegmatic on my bier no regrets — my body bears truth stem to stern beginning with the hips who am of common stock looking to the sea face ground — nothing now conjured from dust suffering — hung by the heels sought occasion as will was never conquered to see the host broken a swinging scythe — the dance this most pleasant to me so make moan of the old days say why should love live

If this is a fracture across time and place, where past and future hold each other’s gaze, then should the world not call a moment’s halt, not hang like a fly-cloud at head-height when a downpour ends? Should it not let fireworks burst, then hold their sculpted light? Then we will see the glory of this wild, this liberated city, where everyone is held in green, red, gold of roman-candle arcs and rocket seed-heads. We walk among the rescued in their newly crowded bars. A couple caught mid-kiss across their table, waiter balanced on one foot with eyes of steel and arms of plates. A self-appointed prophet in a shirt and tie gapes, fish-like, caught halfway through a lie. I could lean and wet my fingertip in stilled champagne, tilted on a singer’s lip. You could grab a smoke ring from the ether between punters and the pole dancer, pocket it as proof, then we could take the air beside the float-glass river, where a busker rests her bow on a string, and you ask what are all these flesh-ghosts thinking? Far from a cheap trick, this city-wide hiatus, the cost per minute is prohibitive. We barely linger in this midnight space before words rush back, before kiss meets kiss.