502 War poems

1914 The phantoms flit before our dazzled eyes, Glory and honour, wrath and righteousness, The agèd phantoms in their bloodstained dress, Vultures that fill the world with ravenous cries, Swarming about the rock where, chained apart, In age-long pain Prometheus finds no rest From the divine flame burning in his breast, And vultures tearing at a human heart. Not yet the blessed hours on golden wings Bring to the crucified their sure relief, Deeper and deeper grows the ancient grief, Blackest of all intolerable things. Eternal Rebel, sad, and old, and blind, Bound with a chain enslaved by every one Of the dark gods who hide the summer sun, Yet art thou still the saviour of mankind. Free soul of fire, break down their chains and bars, Drive out those unclean phantoms of the brain, Till every living thing be friends again, And our lost earth true comrade to the stars.

The street is empty as a monk’s memory, and faces explode in the flames like acorns— and the dead crowd the horizon and doorways. No vein can bleed more than it already has, no scream will rise higher than it’s already risen. We will not leave! Everyone outside is waiting for the trucks and the cars loaded with honey and hostages. We will not leave! The shields of light are breaking apart before the rout and the siege; outside, everyone wants us to leave. But we will not leave! Ivory white brides behind their veils slowly walk in captivity’s glare, waiting, and everyone outside wants us to leave, but we will not leave! The big guns pound the jujube groves, destroying the dreams of the violets, extinguishing bread, killing the salt, unleashing thirst and parching lips and souls. And everyone outside is saying: “What are we waiting for? Warmth we’re denied, the air itself has been seized! Why aren’t we leaving?” Masks fill the pulpits and brothels, the places of ablution. Masks cross-eyed with utter amazement; they do not believe what is now so clear, and fall, astonished, writhing like worms, or tongues. We will not leave! Are we in the inside only to leave? Leaving is just for the masks, for pulpits and conventions. Leaving is just for the siege-that-comes-from-within, the siege that comes from the Bedouin’s loins, the siege of the brethren tarnished by the taste of the blade and the stink of crows. We will not leave! Outside they’re blocking the exits and offering their blessings to the impostor, praying, petitioning Almighty God for our deaths. 5.11.1983

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us . . . Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent . . . Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient . . . Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous, But nothing happens. Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire, Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles. Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles, Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war. What are we doing here? The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow . . . We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy. Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey, But nothing happens. Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence. Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow, With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew, We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance, But nothing happens. Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces— We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed, Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed, Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses. —Is it that we are dying? Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there; For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs; Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed,— We turn back to our dying. Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn; Now ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit. For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid; Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born, For love of God seems dying. Tonight, this frost will fasten on this mud and us, Shrivelling many hands, and puckering foreheads crisp. The burying-party, picks and shovels in shaking grasp, Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice, But nothing happens.

The old Roman sow Bears a new litter now To fatten for a while On the same imperial swill. The cannibal wolf will dig And root out Spanish bones beside the pig. Germany has reared A rare ugly bird To screech a sour song In the German tongue: Tell me if there be A sparrowhawk for such birds as he? The parrots lift their beaks And fill the air with shrieks. Ambassador is sent From the parrots’ parliament: “Oh see how fine I fly And nibble crackers got in Germany.” Europe is a feast For every bloody beast: Jackals will grow fat On the bones after that. But in the end of all None but the crows can sing the funeral. Germany has reared A rare ugly bird, But crows ate Roman pig Before this bird was egg. And in the end of all Crows will come back and sing the funeral.

For Nelly Sachs It wasn't the earth that swallowed them. Was it the air? Numerous as the sand, they did not become sand, but came to naught instead. They've been forgotten in droves. Often, and hand in hand, like minutes. More than us, but without memorials. Not registered, not cipherable from dust, but vanished— their names, spoons, and footsoles. They don't make us sorry. Nobody can remember them: Were they born, did they flee, have they died? They were not missed. The world is airtight yet held together by what it does not house, by the vanished. They are everywhere. Without the absent ones, there would be nothing. Without the fugitives, nothing is firm. Without the forgotten, nothing for certain. The vanished are just. That's how we'll fade, too. * * * Für Nelly Sachs Nicht die Erde hat sie verschluckt. War es die Luft? Wie der Sand sind sie zahireich, doch nicht zu Sand sind sie geworden, sondern zu nichte. In Scharen sind sie vergessen. Häufig und Hand in Hand, wie die Minuten. Mehr als wir, doch ohne Andenken. Nicht verzeichnet, nicht abzulesen im Staub, sondern verschwunden sind ihre Namen, Löffel und Sohlen. Sie reuen uns nicht. Es kann sich niemand auf sie besinnen: Sind sie geboren, geflohen, gestorben? Vermißt sind sie nicht worden. Lückenlos ist die Welt, doch zusammengehalten von dem was sie nicht behaust, von den Verschwundenen. Sie sind überall. Ohne die Abwesenden wäre nichts da. Ohne die Flüchtigen wäre nichts fest. Ohne die Vergessenen nichts gewiß. Die Verschwundenen sind gerecht. So verschallen wir auch.

Crouched before dismantled guns, we found war souvenirs our uncle padlocked in the attic, a brittle latch easily pried off. Stiff uniforms on top, snapshots of soldiers young as our cousins, a velvet box of medals as if he fought all battles in World War II. Bayonets, machetes, a folded flag, two hand grenades with missing pins. We picked up teeth like pennies, loose, as if tossed in, a piece of something dark and waxy like a fig, curved like a question mark, a human ear. We touched dried pieces of cloth stuck to curved bones and held them to the light, turning them over and over, wondering how did uncles learn to kill, what would happen when we grew up.

Belfast, Winter, 1976 When we stop where you lived, the house has thickened, the entry level to the wall with bricks, as though it could keep you out. Again the dream has fooled you into waking and we have walked out past ourselves, through the windows to be remembered in the light of closed rooms as a series of impositions across the arms of a chair, that woman’s face startled out of us so it lingers along a brick front. You are leading me back to the burned arcade where you said I stood with you in your childhood last night, your childhood which includes me now as surely as the look of that missing face between the rows of houses. We have gone so far into your past that nothing reflects us. No sun gleams from the glassless frame where a room burned, though the house stayed whole. There is your school, your church, the place you drank cider at lunch time. New rows of houses are going up. Children play quietly in a stairwell. Walking back, you tell the story of the sniper’s bullet making two clean holes in the taxi, how the driver ducked and drove on like nothing happened. No pain passed through you; it did not even stop the car or make you live more carefully. Near the check point we stop talking, you let the hands rub your clothes against your body. You seem to be there, all there. Watching, I am more apart for the sign of dismissal they will give me, thinking a woman would not conceal as I have, the perfect map of this return where I have met and lost you willingly in a dead and living place. Now when you find me next in the dream, this boundary will move with us. We will both come back.

(On this date, Goebbels moved into the lowest level of the bunker, taking a room opposite Hitler’s.) Stand back, make way, you mindless scum, Squire Voland the Seducer’s come— Old Bock from Babelsberg whose tower Falls silent now, whose shrunken power For lies or lays comes hobbling home Into this concrete catacomb. Here’s Runty Joe, the cunt collector Who grew to greatness, first erector Of myths and missions, fibs and fables, Who pulled the wool then turned the tables: He piped the tunes and called the dance Where shirtless countries lost their pants. Goatfooted Pan, the nation’s gander To whom Pan-Germans all played pander, The jovial cob-swan quick to cover Lida Baarova, his check-list lover; Swellfoot the Tyrant, he could riddle Men’s minds away, hi-diddle-diddle. Our little Doctor, Joe the Gimp Comes back to limpness and his limp: Hephaistos, Vulcan the lame smith Whose net of lies caught one true myth: His wife, the famous beauty, whored By numbskull Mars, the dull warlord. What if I took my little fling At conquest, at adventuring. Pried the lid of Pandora’s box off— There’s nothing there to bring your rocks off. I never saw one fucking day So fine I courted it to stay. If I got snarled in my own mesh Of thighs and bellies, who wants flesh? I never hankered after matter. Let Hermann swell up, grosser, fatter, Weighed down by medals, houses, clothing; They leave me lean, secured in loathing. As a young man, I pricked the bubble Of every creed; I saw that rubble And offered myself the realms of earth Just to say Yes. But what’s it worth? No thank you, Ma’am. Behold the Ram Of God: I doubt, therefore I am. Here I forsake that long pricktease Of histories, hopes, lusts, luxuries. I come back to my first Ideal— The vacancy that’s always real. I sniffed out all life’s openings: I loved only the holes in things. So strip down one bare cell for this Lay Brother of the last abyss. To me, still, all abstractions smell; My head and nose clear in this cell Of concrete, this confession booth Where liars face up to blank truth. My tongue lashed millions to the knife; Here, I’ll hold hands with my soiled wife. My lies piped men out, hot to slaughter; Here, I’ll read stories to my daughter Then hack off all relations, choose Only the Nothing you can’t lose, Send back this body, fixed in its Infantile paralysis. I was born small; I shall grow less Till I burst into Nothingness, That slot in time where only pure Spirit extends, absent and sure. I am that spirit that denies, High Priest of Laymen, Prince of Lies. Your house is founded on my rock; Truth crows; now I deny my cock. Jock of this walk, I turn down all, Robbing my Peter to play Paul. I give up all goods I possess To build my faith on faithlessness. Black Peter, I belie my Lord— You’ve got to die to spread the Word. Now the last act; there’s no sequel. Soon, once more, all things shall be equal.

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows. In the great hour of destiny they stand, Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows. Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives. Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives. I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats, And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain, Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats, And mocked by hopeless longing to regain Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats, And going to the office in the train.

I I wandered through a house of many rooms. It grew darker and darker, Until, at last, I could only find my way By passing my fingers along the wall. Suddenly my hand shot through an open window, And the thorn of a rose I could not see Pricked it so sharply That I cried aloud. II I dug a grave under an oak-tree. With infinite care, I stamped my spade Into the heavy grass. The sod sucked it, And I drew it out with effort, Watching the steel run liquid in the moonlight As it came clear. I stooped, and dug, and never turned, For behind me, On the dried leaves, My own face lay like a white pebble, Waiting. III I gambled with a silver money. The dried seed-vessels of “honesty” Were stacked in front of me. Dry, white years slipping through my fingers One by one. One by one, gathered by the Croupier. “Faites vos jeux, Messieurs.” I staked on the red, And the black won. Dry years, Dead years; But I had a system, I always staked on the red. IV I painted the leaves of bushes red And shouted: “Fire! Fire!” But the neighbors only laughed. “We cannot warm our hands at them,” they said. Then they cut down my bushes, And made a bonfire, And danced about it. But I covered my face and wept, For ashes are not beautiful Even in the dawn. V I followed a procession of singing girls Who danced to the glitter of tambourines. Where the street turned at a lighted corner, I caught the purple dress of one of the dancers, But, as I grasped it, it tore, And the purple dye ran from it Like blood Upon the ground. VI I wished to post a letter, But although I paid much, Still the letter was overweight. “What is in this package?” said the clerk, “It is very heavy.” “Yes,” I said, “And yet it is only a dried fruit.” VII I had made a kite, On it I had pasted golden stars And white torches, And the tail was spotted scarlet like a tiger-lily, And very long. I flew my kite, And my soul was contented Watching it flash against the concave of the sky. My friends pointed at the clouds; They begged me to take in my kite. But I was happy Seeing the mirror shock of it Against the black clouds. Then the lightning came And struck the kite. It puffed—blazed—fell. But still I walked on, In the drowning rain, Slowly winding up the string.