502 War poems

Shunning the British tourist bus, we walk, My child and I, the West Woods where, like dogs Who know their death is due, the wounded took Themselves to give up hope. The horror begs Imagining—the soldiers hauling limbs Hacked off or messmates dead, and everywhere, Mixed with the summer scent of swelling plums, A stench of putrid flesh and burning hair. Here Lee was turned. That night the forest filled With muttered names of loved ones left, and cries From mangled soldiers pleading to be killed. Seeing my distant look, my daughter tries My sleeve: “What is it, what?” she asks, and I Say “nothing, nothing”—though “nothing” is a lie.

—for Logan and Renée Jenkins Unlike almost everything Else just surviving here In summer, poison flowers Flourish in this sweltering Heat, tangling like blown Litter in fences around The trailer parks and motel Pools, and turning the islands Pinkish-white between Divided lanes of freeway, Where all day long against The burnished hubbub of U- Haul trucks and automobiles, Off-the-road vehicles and Campers, the oleander shakes Its brightly polished pocket- Knives, as at the motorcade Of some ambassador hurrying Through a village of the poor. And every day by late after- Noon the overwatered lawns Around the shopping mall Still burn off brown, their Pampered opulence upbraided By the palms’ insomniac Vision of one ineffable apoc- Alyptic noon. But the smell Is somehow sweeter than That makes you think, a dry Lemon-sweetness, as if some- Where nearby wild verbena Has been forced to leaf By a match held up to each Bud—and the silo-skyscraper Holiday Inn at the famous Resort “Where the Horizon Ends” could almost be that Match the way the heat Sloughs off it like after- Burn. And yet, because Of the way the sun in- Tensifies everything, one Always has the feeling there Is much less here than meets The eye: the halcyon blink Of a shard of glass, a Lear- Jet wafted into vapor out On the tarmac’s run, the way Common quartzstone gives Off heat which seems to come From inside itself, and not, In fact, from that more- Than-imaginably-nuclear sun Which every morning starts Up so illusionless, and every Evening slow-dissolves On the blue and otherwise Planetary hills, like a Valium Breaking up on the tongue.

God will have all, or none; serve Him, or fall Down before Baal, Bel, or Belial: Either be hot, or cold: God doth despise, Abhorre, and spew out all Neutralities.

Come to your heaven, you heavenly choirs, Earth hath the heaven of your desires. Remove your dwelling to your God; A stall is now his best abode. Sith men their homage do deny, Come, angels, all their fault supply. His chilling cold doth heat require; Come, seraphins, in lieu of fire. This little ark no cover hath; Let cherubs’ wings his body swathe. Come, Raphael, this babe must eat; Provide our little Toby meat. Let Gabriel be now his groom, That first took up his earthly room. Let Michael stand in his defense, Whom love hath linked to feeble sense. Let graces rock when he doth cry, And angels sing his lullaby. The same you saw in heavenly seat Is he that now sucks Mary’s teat; Agnize your king a mortal wight, His borrowed weed lets not your sight. Come, kiss the manger where he lies, That is your bliss above the skies. This little babe, so few days old, Is come to rifle Satan’s fold; All hell doth at his presence quake. Though he himself for cold do shake, For in this weak unarmèd wise The gates of hell he will surprise. With tears he fights and wins the field; His naked breast stands for a shield; His battering shot are babish cries, His arrows looks of weeping eyes, His martial ensigns cold and need, And feeble flesh his warrior’s steed. His camp is pitchèd in a stall, His bulwark but a broken wall, The crib his trench, hay stalks his stakes, Of shepherds he his muster makes; And thus, as sure his foe to wound, The angels’ trumps alarum sound. My soul, with Christ join thou in fight; Stick to the tents that he hath pight; Within his crib is surest ward, This little babe will be thy guard. If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy, Then flit not from this heavenly boy.

1915-1916 I Phantasmal fears, And the flap of the flame, And the throb of the clock, And a loosened slate, And the blind night's drone, Which tiredly the spectral pines intone! II And the blood in my ears Strumming always the same, And the gable-cock With its fitful grate, And myself, alone. III The twelfth hour nears Hand-hid, as in shame; I undo the lock, And listen, and wait For the Young Unknown. IV In the dark there careers — As if Death astride came To numb all with his knock — A horse at mad rate Over rut and stone. V No figure appears, No call of my name, No sound but 'Tic-toc' Without check. Past the gate It clatters — is gone. VI What rider it bears There is none to proclaim; And the Old Year has struck, And, scarce animate, The New makes moan. VII Maybe that 'More Tears! — More Famine and Flame — More Severance and Shock!' Is the order from Fate That the Rider speeds on To pale Europe; and tiredly the pines intone.

France, March 1916. Over the top! The wire’s thin here, unbarbed Plain rusty coils, not staked, and low enough: Full of old tins, though—“When you’re through, all three, Aim quarter left for fifty yards or so, Then straight for that new piece of German wire; See if it’s thick, and listen for a while For sounds of working; don’t run any risks; About an hour; now, over!” And we placed Our hands on the topmost sand-bags, leapt, and stood A second with curved backs, then crept to the wire, Wormed ourselves tinkling through, glanced back, and dropped. The sodden ground was splashed with shallow pools, And tufts of crackling cornstalks, two years old, No man had reaped, and patches of spring grass. Half-seen, as rose and sank the flares, were strewn The wrecks of our attack: the bandoliers, Packs, rifles, bayonets, belts, and haversacks, Shell fragments, and the huge whole forms of shells Shot fruitlessly—and everywhere the dead. Only the dead were always present—present As a vile sickly smell of rottenness; The rustling stubble and the early grass, The slimy pools — the dead men stank through all, Pungent and sharp; as bodies loomed before, And as we passed, they stank: then dulled away To that vague fœtor, all encompassing, Infecting earth and air. They lay, all clothed, Each in some new and piteous attitude That we well marked to guide us back: as he, Outside our wire, that lay on his back and crossed His legs Crusader-wise: I smiled at that, And thought on Elia and his Temple Church. From him, at quarter left, lay a small corpse, Down in a hollow, huddled as in a bed, That one of us put his hand on unawares. Next was a bunch of half a dozen men All blown to bits, an archipelago Of corrupt fragments, vexing to us three, Who had no light to see by, save the flares. On such a trail, so light, for ninety yards We crawled on belly and elbows, till we saw, Instead of lumpish dead before our eyes, The stakes and crosslines of the German wire. We lay in shelter of the last dead man, Ourselves as dead, and heard their shovels ring Turning the earth, then talk and cough at times. A sentry fired and a machine-gun spat; They shot a glare above us, when it fell And spluttered out in the pools of No Man’s Land, We turned and crawled past the remembered dead: Past him and him, and them and him, until, For he lay some way apart, we caught the scent Of the Crusader and slide past his legs, And through the wire and home, and got our rum.

—Barrio René Cisneros Managua, Nicaragua, June-July 1982 This was the dictator’s land before the revolution. Now the dictator is exiled to necropolis, his army brooding in camps on the border, and the congregation of the landless stipples the earth with a thousand shacks, every weatherbeaten carpenter planting a fistful of nails. Here I dig latrines. I dig because last week I saw a funeral in the streets of Managua, the coffin swaddled in a red and black flag, hoisted by a procession so silent that even their feet seemed to leave no sound on the gravel. He was eighteen, with the border patrol, when a sharpshooter from the dictator’s army took aim at the back of his head. I dig because yesterday I saw four walls of photographs: the faces of volunteers in high school uniforms who taught campesinos to read, bringing an alphabet sandwiched in notebooks to places where the mist never rises from the trees. All dead, by malaria or the greedy river or the dictator’s army swarming the illiterate villages like a sky full of corn-plundering birds. I dig because today, in this barrio without plumbing, I saw a woman wearing a yellow dress climb into a barrel of water to wash herself and the dress at the same time, her cupped hands spilling. I dig because today I stopped digging to drink an orange soda. In a country with no glass, the boy kept the treasured bottle and poured the liquid into a plastic bag full of ice, then poked a hole with a straw. I dig because today my shovel struck a clay bowl centuries old, the art of ancient fingers moist with this same earth, perfect but for one crack in the lip. I dig because I have hauled garbage and pumped gas and cut paper and sold encyclopedias door to door. I dig, digging until the passport in my back pocket saturates with dirt, because here I work for nothing and for everything.

Safety First. Never point your weapon, keep your finger off the trigger. Assume a loaded barrel, even when it isn’t, especially when you know it isn’t. Glocks are lightweight but sensitive; the Keltec has a long pull and a kick. Rifles have penetrating power, viz.: if the projectile doesn’t lodge in its mark, it will travel some distance until it finds shelter; it will certainly pierce your ordinary drywall partition. You could wound the burglar and kill your child sleeping in the next room, all with one shot. Open Air. Fear, of course. Then the sudden pleasure of heft—as if the hand had always yearned for this solemn fit, this gravitas, and now had found its true repose. Don’t pull the trigger, squeeze it— squeeze between heartbeats. Look down the sights. Don’t hold your breath. Don’t hold anything, just stop breathing. Level the scene with your eyes. Listen. Soft, now: squeeze. Gender Politics. Guys like noise: rapid fire, thunk-and-slide of a blunt-nose silver Mossberg, or double-handed Colts, slugging it out from the hips. Rambo or cowboy, they’ll whoop it up. Women are fewer, more elegant. They prefer precision: tin cans swing-dancing in the trees, the paper bull’s-eye’s tidy rupture at fifty yards. (Question: If you were being pursued, how would you prefer to go down— ripped through a blanket of fire or plucked by one incandescent fingertip?) The Bullet. dark dark no wind no heaven i am not anything   not borne on air   i bear myself   i can slice the air   no wind can hold me   let me   let me go   i can see   yes o aperture o light   let me   off go off   straight is my verb   straight my glory road   yes   now i can   feel it the light i am flame   velocity o beautiful body i am coming i am yours before you know it i am home

For one throb of the artery, While on that old grey stone I sat Under the old wind-broken tree, I knew that One is animate Mankind inanimate phantasy.

It is easily forgotten, year to year, exactly where the plot is, though the place is entirely familiar— a willow tree by a curving roadway sweeping black asphalt with tender leaves; damp grass strewn with flower boxes, canvas chairs, darkskinned old ladies circling in draped black crepe family stones, fingers cramped red at the knuckles, discolored nails, fresh soil for new plants, old rosaries; such fingers kneading the damp earth gently down on new roots, black humus caught in grey hair brushed back, and the single waterfaucet, birdlike upon its grey pipe stem, a stream opening at its foot. We know the stories that are told, by starts and stops, by bent men at strange joy regarding the precise enactments of their own gesturing. And among the women there will be a naming of families, a counting off, an ordering. The morning may be brilliant; the season is one of brilliances—sunlight through the fountained willow behind us, its splayed shadow spreading westward, our shadows westward, irregular across damp grass, the close-set stones. It may be that since our walk there is faltering, moving in careful steps around snow-on-the-mountain, bluebells and zebragrass toward that place between the willow and the waterfaucet, the way is lost, that we have no practiced step there, and walking, our own sway and balance, fails us.