502 War poems

This Luxembourg morning, this Luxembourg autumn, As I walk back and forth upon my youth, No strollers, no fountains, no boats in the water, No children, no flowers. Ah! September flowers and the sunburnt shouts of children Defying the coming winter. Now only two old fellows trying to play tennis. This autumn morning without children—the children’s theater closed! This Luxembourg where I no longer find my youth, The years as fresh as cut grass. Comrades, my dreams are vanquished in despair, are they not? Here they fall like leaves with other leaves, Older, mortally wounded, trampled, bitter with blood, Gathered together for what common grave? I no longer know this Luxembourg, those soldiers at attention. They set up cannons to protect the Senators’ aimless retirement They dig trenches under the bench where I learned about The sweet budding of lips. This sign, ah! yes, of dangerous youth! . . . I watch the leaves fall into these false shelters, into graves Into trenches where the blood of an entire generation flows Europe is burying the nations’ leaven And the hope of new races.

for Sappho Let my music be found wanting in comparison to yours (as it must) let me be found loving (as you were) extravagantly the beautiful let me find you and the song (forever) between us in these terrible times

Varus, varus, gib mir meine Legionen wieder Quick on my feet in those Novembers of my loneliness, I tossed a short pass, Almost the instant I got the ball, right over the head Of Barrel Terry before he knocked me cold. When I woke, I found myself crying out Latin conjugations, and the new snow falling At the edge of a green field. Lemoyne Crone had caught the pass, while I lay Unconscious and raging Alone with the fire ghost of Catullus, the contemptuous graces tossing Garlands and hendecasyllabics over the head Of Cornelius Nepos the mastodon, The huge volume. At the edges of Southeast Asia this afternoon The quarterbacks and the lines are beginning to fall, A spring snow, And terrified young men Quick on their feet Lob one another’s skulls across Wings of strange birds that are burning Themselves alive.

Beside the rivers of the midnight town Where four-foot couples love and paupers drown, Shots of quick hell we took, our final kiss, The great and swinging bridge a bower for this. Your cheek lay burning in my fingers’ cup; Often my lip moved downward and yours up Till both adjusted, tightened, locksmith-true: The flesh precise, the crazy brain askew. Roughly the train with grim and piston knee Pounded apart our pleasure, you from me; Flare warned and ticket whispered and bell cried. Time and the locks of bitter rail divide. For ease remember, all that parted lie: Men who in camp of shot or doldrum die, Who at land’s-end eternal furlough take —This for memento as alone you wake.

(After Dr. Haase gave them shots of morphine, Magda gave each child an ampule of potassium cyanide from a spoon.) This is the needle that we give Soldiers and children when they live Near the front in primitive Conditions or real dangers; This is the spoon we use to feed Men trapped in trouble or in need, When weakness or bad luck might lead Them to the hands of strangers. This is the room where you can sleep Your sleep out, curled up under deep Layers of covering that will keep You safe till all harm’s past. This is the bed where you can rest In perfect silence, undistressed By noise or nightmares, as my breast Once held you soft but fast. This is the Doctor who has brought Your needle with your special shot To quiet you; you won’t get caught Off guard or unprepared. I am your nurse who’ll comfort you; I nursed you, fed you till you grew Too big to feed; now you’re all through Fretting or feeling scared. This is the glass tube that contains Calm that will spread down through your veins To free you finally from all pains Of going on in error. This tiny pinprick sets the germ Inside you that fills out its term Till you can feel yourself grow firm Against all doubt, all terror. Into this spoon I break the pill That stiffens the unsteady will And hardens you against the chill Voice of a world of lies. This amber medicine implants Steadfastness in your blood; this grants Immunity from greed and chance, And from all compromise. This is the serum that can cure Weak hearts; these pure, clear drops insure You’ll face what comes and can endure The test; you’ll never falter. This is the potion that preserves You in a faith that never swerves; This sets the pattern of your nerves Too firm for you to alter. I set this spoon between your tight Teeth, as I gave you your first bite; This satisfies your appetite For other nourishment. Take this on your tongue; this do Remembering your mother who So loved her Leader she stayed true When all the others went, When every friend proved false, in the Delirium of treachery On every hand, when even He Had turned His face aside. He shut himself in with His whore; Then, though I screamed outside His door, Said He’d not see me anymore. They both took cyanide. Open wide, now, little bird; I who sang you your first word Soothe away every sound you’ve heard Except your Leader’s voice. Close your eyes, now; take your death. Once we slapped you to take breath. Vengeance is mine, the Lord God saith And cancels each last choice. Once, my first words marked out your mind; Just as our Leader’s phrases bind All hearts to Him, building a blind Loyalty through the nation, We shape you into a pure form. Trapped, our best soldiers tricked the storm, The Reds: those last hours, they felt warm Who stood fast to their station. You needn’t fear what your life meant; You won’t curse how your hours were spent; You’ll grow like your own monument To all things sure and good, Fixed like a frieze in high relief Of granite figures that our Chief Accepts into His true belief, His true blood-brotherhood. You’ll never bite the hand that fed you, Won’t turn away from those that bred you, Comforted your nights and led you Into the thought of virtue; You won’t be turned from your own bed; Won’t turn into that thing you dread; No new betrayal lies ahead; Now no one else can hurt you.

A voice from the dark called out, ‘The poets must give us imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar imagination of disaster. Peace, not only the absence of war.’ But peace, like a poem, is not there ahead of itself, can’t be imagined before it is made, can’t be known except in the words of its making, grammar of justice, syntax of mutual aid. A feeling towards it, dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have until we begin to utter its metaphors, learning them as we speak. A line of peace might appear if we restructured the sentence our lives are making, revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power, questioned our needs, allowed long pauses . . . A cadence of peace might balance its weight on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence, an energy field more intense than war, might pulse then, stanza by stanza into the world, each act of living one of its words, each word a vibration of light—facets of the forming crystal.

(July, 1862) Ye elms that wave on Malvern Hill In prime of morn and May, Recall ye how McClellan’s men Here stood at bay? While deep within yon forest dim Our rigid comrades lay— Some with the cartridge in their mouth, Others with fixed arms lifted South— Invoking so The cypress glades? Ah wilds of woe! The spires of Richmond, late beheld Through rifts in musket-haze, Were closed from view in clouds of dust On leaf-walled ways, Where streamed our wagons in caravan; And the Seven Nights and Days Of march and fast, retreat and fight, Pinched our grimed faces to ghastly plight— Does the elm wood Recall the haggard beards of blood? The battle-smoked flag, with stars eclipsed We followed (it never fell!)— In silence husbanded our strength— Received their yell; Till on this slope we patient turned With cannon ordered well; Reverse we proved was not defeat; But ah, the sod what thousands meet!— Does Malvern Wood Bethink itself, and muse and brood? We elms of Malvern Hill Remember every thing; But sap the twig will fill; Wag the world how it will, Leaves must be green in Spring.

"Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have sat us down to wet Right many a nipperkin! "But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. "I shot him dead because — Because he was my foe, Just so: my foe of course he was; That's clear enough; although "He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, Off-hand like — just as I — Was out of work — had sold his traps — No other reason why. "Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You'd treat if met where any bar is, Or help to half-a-crown."

After there were no women, men, and children, from the somber deeps horseshoe crabs crawled up on somber shores: Man-of-Wars' blue sails drifted downwind and blue filaments of some biblical cloak floated below: the stinging filaments. The cored of bone and rock-headed came near: clouds made wandering shadows: sea and grasses mingled:: There was no hell after all but a lull before it began over:: flesh lying alone: then mating: a little spray of soul: and the grace of waves, of stars, and remotest isles.

Only to hoot, to speak flitting blade in the dark, mouth able to sound verb for thing, him chicken eat. Not know gallop but for sound, stud but for knotting haunches, tipping its body, arching its head toward dirt. Chewing hay under a ranch that, bean-juice skin tight as saddle leather, neck stiff as a coffee can—as lanterns go out, stud fed and tied to post—Mangled piles up some hay, rests his bones for the long day of pounding tent stakes. — — — Ringmaster swigs moonshine from jar, stomps camp, looking for LuLu’s pudgy round face. Mangled wakes, remembers the switching, musky soil, the stud’s hooves sucking mud, LuLu moaning in the night. Stock of spade, thud of stakes drove in the dirt; the performers sagging in their bones, their breath spent breaking in frost-thick dawn, the trees swaying barer as the day wears on, wind carrying the red and yellow leaves across the fields. After the act, LuLu writes letters for Mangled, that he trots stud into the show, bullwhip in one hand, bridle the other. — — — She did not write about a scar that runs down his cheek, or the clown he stabbed near Tulsa. LuLu writes about his new square-toed boots and the creased-up Levi’s he bought at a mercantile in Lawrence, Kansas. She writes about his haircuts, how if he could, he would write letters himself, but signed with his throwing hand. Sometimes she reads him Westerns and Sgt. Rock comic books—she lies about what the stories say—that his skillet face ain’t so flat. — — — Him horse ride, LuLu throw with knife, fire cook meat. Him audience laugh make, headdress wear. Him horse smell snout, hooves scrape rock out, horse-apple chew hand. — — — Sundays LuLu and Mangled go to the Baptist church before the start of the show. They sing hymns, sometimes they walk down to the river with the congregation and watch the preacher dunk the pudgy babies into the bright-sparked current, Mangled thinks about the creek-bed soil, LuLu in her Sunday dress, her face painted blush, lips bright, glossy, shined for the show.