502 War poems

Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy. —Che Guevara Tengo una remera del Che y no sé por qué, I have a Che t-shirt and I don’t know why. —Contemporary Argentine saying I see the red shirt at the peace rally and think of my parents who left everyone and every thing they knew and loved save for the coin forgotten in my brother’s baby jacket. Men like me in Cuba failed the test of this symbol’s manhood, were called “Western perversions” were imprisoned and made to labor. Thousands, like these assembled, were rounded up in the middle of the night driven to the far countryside to cut sugarcane for a revolution’s economic quotas. Tio Alberto’s eyes go blank when he speaks of the price he paid: three years of forced hard labor to work like a dog in the sun for the privilege of leaving his own country. I think of the chain of caudillos that promised one thing and delivered another.

(Civil War Photography by T. O’Sullivan, 1866) Raisin-black blood dries on their faces. Thick wool clothes. Lumps of bloated bodies lying on their backs. Mouths open. Chins pointing to the sky. As though blown over backward. Or turned. Fingers swollen. Boots and rifles missing. Coats and jackets pulled up exposing gray shirts, bloody underwear. The sky drifts toward sap green. No fences. No stone walls.

One day in the dreamy summer, On the Sabbath hills, from afar We heard the solemn echoes Of the first fierce words of war. Ah, tell me, thou veilèd Watcher Of the storm and the calm to come, How long by the sun or shadow Till these noises again are dumb. And soon in a hush and glimmer We thought of the dark, strange fight, Whose close in a ghastly quiet Lay dim in the beautiful night. Then we talk’d of coldness and pallor, And of things with blinded eyes That stared at the golden stillness Of the moon in those lighted skies; And of souls, at morning wrestling In the dust with passion and moan, So far away at evening In the silence of worlds unknown. But a delicate wind beside us Was rustling the dusky hours, As it gather’d the dewy odors Of the snowy jessamine-flowers. And I gave you a spray of the blossoms, And said: “I shall never know How the hearts in the land are breaking, My dearest, unless you go.”

Mortal and full of praise, I watch the enchanted hero busy at his chores: desert, tundra, prairie restless under an easy stride. Dagger in belt, sword slapping thigh, he passes from sight, the restored land sprung airily to green praise. Arachnid webs entangle life. A busyness of thread weaves silk into night— the long shudder of moonlight, a transfixed eye shuddering. Nothing is so easy as death, I try to say. But the hard fact of glazed eyes, the boy turned to solitude, lies face up in the center of all webs, roads unwinding stubble. Whoever is alone walks brittle filaments, late stars smudged on dawn, a night sky’s frayed dawn. Dare we evaluate life: This hero’s gesture charms eternity? Someone who paused here once on an ordinary day, troubled by the impatience of his calling, set up a hasty signpost: “Toward…” Nothing is so scarred as this place, shards of parched cloth trampled by footprints coiling crazed centers. Fresh with spring, light breezes play on dust. A whisper of rain. Ropes of skeined thunder twist sky.

from a distance almost festive rippling in the morning breeze soft conversations great piles of scallions a pungent sun illuminates the faces of young girls she keeps grabbing them, straightening out their roots and tails in a little gesture of self-consciousness, she pulls her sweater away from her face knocks the dirt off, ties a rubber band around them Ejido San Quintin all are packed in ice and shipped to Great Britian __________ from a distance almost restive rising on the 20th floor clipped conversations great piles of papers a humming fax machine illuminates the faces of young girls they keep grabbing at her, straightening out her hands and fingers in a little gesture of self-consciousness, she pulls her sweater away from her face lifts it off the paper tray, sticks a sticky on it Ejido San Quintin all are packed in ice and shipped to Great Britian __________ from a distance almost resistive basking in the building’s fluorescent light algebraic conversations great piles of direct objects a deadened emotion illuminates the faces of young girls he keeps changing them, sorting out the nouns and verbs in a little gesture of trained-consciousness, he quickly minimizes the screen from his face knocks the dirt off, ties a rubber band around them Ejido San Quintin all are packed in ice and shipped to Great Britian __________ from a distance almost imperceptive breezing through the morning frequencies anxious reservations great piles of diners a poetry audience illuminates the faces of young girls she keeps grabbing them, straightening out their roots and social whereabouts in a non-literal gesture of class-consciousness, he pulls her sweater away from her face knocks the dirt off, ties a rubber band around them Ejido San Quintin all are packed in ice and shipped to Great Britian __________ from a distance almost assertive shuffling through the evening news moot conversations great piles of rotting vegetables a pungent spin-off literature illuminates the faces of young girls it keeps grabbing him, chopping up his roots and raison d’êtres in a tactically abstract solidarizing gesture of class-consciousness, she peels his self conscious piece away from her face knocks the dirt off, ties a rubber band around it Ejido San Quintin all are packed in ice and shipped to Great Britian _________ Ejido: A landholding community owned collectively by its members. In 1992, the Mexican congress (largely at the behest of Wall Street) passed legislation aimed at watering-down Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution (guaranteeing the fundamental economic and cultural rights of the ejidos), opening the way for the privatization and commercialization of the lands, thus rendering the peasants’ political gains (stemming from the Mexican Revolution of 1910- 1917) effectively moot.

I’m honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein. —President George W. Bush, Washington DC, May 25 , 2004 “Just ask yourself,” we said back in those days, “Is this world better off without Saddam Hussein?” Now that’s a simple question. Just ask yourself. It turned up starkly, undeniably As that left hand inside the trench Marines were digging At the prison turned “facility.” That was one day’s headlined excavation. Meanwhile, the relics from the tell near Nasiriyah Were looted from the National Museum. Is our world better off without Saddam Hussein, who had cut off so many other hands? Our own president had grateful thousands On hand to honor him, give him a hand In DC on the birthday of the Sage of Concord. In other words, though, is this world better off Without those who have made it better off? It’s a bit of a riddle, really, how to tell, But each old hand among us has a hunch. Is our world better off without Bobby E. Beasely? Michael Yury Tarlavsky? Craig W. Cherry? Yadir G. Reynoso? Joshua I. Bunch? These soldiers’ names graced the obituary Page that day in the LATimes. It’s archived. Check it. But what can we tell from a name? Or measly Obit? Ask yourself. —Well, more than a bit Of obit is in the name Tobit, but just what Tobit of Nineveh—praised for preparing For righteous burial the Judahites Who fell in war against Assyria, And blessed with a devoted son who saved him— What Tobit could now have to do with us, Not even our extravagant friend Emerson —Though wait!Emer? Cuchulain’s perfect mate, Worked hand in hand with him, possessor of The six great gifts of womanhood, from needlework Through chastity to sweet words and gentle speech? —Perhaps not even Emerson could tell, Who lauded nature’s “rounds” and scorned the divisive “line,” Its “bounds of good and ill,” and praised perverse Returns (“Evil will bless, and ice will burn”), And who would have turned 199 That day in the merry month of Jumada al-awwal When Bush addressed that brave unnamed Baghdadi. —Raymond J. Faulstich, Jr., Kane M. Funke. —What names people have! Stephen I. Yenser! What monikers, what handles for their children. —Daniel Lee Galvan...Anyway, without them, mind you, We’d still have that butcher Saddam Hussein. —Wait!With them, you mean, we’d still have Saddam? —Well, it can be perplexing when it’s put like that. —Bemusing. Like the sound of one hand clapping. —Or one hand washing itself. Is our world better Off without Roberto Abad? —Abad, Roberto: What kind of name is that, in any case? Middle Eastern? And where’s the middle initial? To tell him from his father, of course. A typo? For Bad, Roberto A.? “Good is a good doctor, But Bad is sometimes better” (Emerson)? Or W, where Emerson and Bush dovetail? —It seems Roberto got his girlfriend pregnant In spite of the “Campaign for Children and Families” Between Iraqi tours in case he didn’t come back From his second, which of course he didn’t, Not for a second, even, to glimpse his son, Whose name we are not told.Hussein, perhaps—or George.

Historical brutality, you are a poppy. With a black scepter, silk wings. I see everything: the field of dew and castles’ wedding parties. Enchant me then, rabble, the leaves are opening. Drink me like wine, say moooo. Translated from the Slovenian

Of course wars, of course lice, of course limbs on opposing sides to remind a body about ambivalence, of course orphans and empty beds and eyes exiled for blinking in the harsh light. Of course Khrushchev gave Crimea to the Ukraine in a blind drunk, and yes, land mines and burning skin and of course organs, some members dismembered to shake at strangers and their evil, and there is no way to imagine that a man shaking a dried penis would ever utter the word darling. Of course personal, add starch for pain, add bluing, of course hang the laundry in the basement, there are thieves in the backyard, of course departing trains, carload after carload of sorrow, the man on top of a boxcar waving, his rifle silhouetted against the white sky, its color draining the way warmth left the Bosnian after he’d burned the last page of the last book, knowing he had reached the end of something though it was not end enough. Of course kisses, the stages of kissing like running borders, endless conversations, stations of the cross, till even the promise of kissing bores you, of course teeth gnashing, ethnic cleansing. The cynical will shrug off the past, the future, the whole left hip of Ecuador slashed for six days of oil, of course an X on the coats of the sick so they would stand apart for deportation, of course rogue tumors over the body politic, the same bodies that took Egyptian mummies and powdered them to use as food seasoning, bon vivant cannibalism, and yes civilized men tossed living penguins into furnaces to fuel their ships. Of course partitions so that after the new territories were defined, families had to line up on a cliff with bullhorns to talk to their people on the other side, of course courage, at times a weapon against yearning, surrender another, a mother of course goes on setting the table, even if it’s with broken plates, and a friend will say gently of course I want to ride with you to the funeral, of course of course of course of course, now then, negotiations, whatever, palisades, the end of whimsy, but then one evening though it is wartime, a man climbs the hill to an amphitheater to play his cello at twilight and history stops talking for a moment and sighs while the melancholy of Albinoni passes from heart to heart and each lifts a little, the way passing a baby around a room can be sacramental, and the memories of simple pleasures become more beautiful, the memory of your joy on a highway to see in the next lane in a neighboring car a clown take off his nose at the end of the day, the memory of how your mother laid roses, sweetheart roses, on the cold grate of the fireplace, and the sudden rain one afternoon in fall after you’d hiked far into the dells and you huddled deep in your overcoat in the wet, waiting out the storm with a sheep that had come up to lean against your side like a rock.

You would think the fury of aerial bombardment Would rouse God to relent; the infinite spaces Are still silent. He looks on shock-pried faces. History, even, does not know what is meant. You would feel that after so many centuries God would give man to repent; yet he can kill As Cain could, but with multitudinous will, No farther advanced than in his ancient furies. Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity? Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all? Is the eternal truth man’s fighting soul Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity? Of Van Wettering I speak, and Averill, Names on a list, whose faces I do not recall But they are gone to early death, who late in school Distinguished the belt feed lever from the belt holding pawl.

Move him into the sun— Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields half-sown. Always it woke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now The kind old sun will know. Think how it wakes the seeds— Woke once the clays of a cold star. Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir? Was it for this the clay grew tall? —O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?