502 War poems

To turn a stone with its white squirming underneath, to pry the disc from the sun’s eclipse—white heat coiling in the blinded eye: to these malign necessities we come from the dim time of dinosaurs who crawled like breathing lava from the earth’s cracked crust, and swung their tiny heads above the lumbering tons of flesh, brains no bigger than a fist clenched to resist the white flash in the sky the day the sun-flares pared them down to relics for museums, turned glaciers back, seared Sinai’s meadows black—the ferns withered, the swamps were melted down to molten mud, the cells uncoupled, recombined, and madly multiplied, huge trees toppled to the ground, the slow life there abandoned hope, a caterpillar stiffened in the grass. Two apes, caught in the act of coupling, made a mutant child who woke to sunlight wondering, his mother torn by the huge new head that forced the narrow birth canal. As if compelled to repetition and to unearth again white fire at the heart of matter—fire we sought and fire we spoke, our thoughts, however elegant, were fire from first to last—like sentries set to watch at Argos for the signal fire passed peak to peak from Troy to Nagasaki, triumphant echo of the burning city walls and prologue to the murders yet to come—we scan the sky for that bright flash, our eyes stared white from watching for the signal fire that ends the epic—a cursed line with its caesura, a pause to signal peace, or a rehearsal for the silence.

For Andrea Brady As though the overcast might tweak an airman’s maps, his foretelling — as though in chains of stop-start ischaemia, I count myself unstressed, I walked along the human promontory rough-tongued as sugar paper, walked from the metal-bashers’ shop, vinegar and cayenne sprinkled, spiked my glass of milk. Well-set icing blistered. Ice set into cat’s-eyes. I walked through the empty lot the enormous empty lot towards the store beckoning me, soon I turned my back on every now forgotten unit. Get yours I said. Get yours. And I kept mine in ghost capital. Such was our material ease that year in plenteousness, in full flush. Sumptuous but interfusing, basking all the while June was leaching sweetly, bite like molasses. The block the far side of the apron squatted with capacity. Happy to take things as seen I browsed, I window-sloped, honey lanyards brushed my lips. Then I too was stopped by the incident, the episode, the voice that spake, lushness hit the doldrums. Frigate birds collapsed on ice, wings like stick pyramids. I stood dangling my bunch of keys. Saw in the lake’s heaped frozen waves a new car exhibition, restaurant, luxury housing. This then was the block whose feed I hung upon, suckling on the live stream so generous I could overflow, creeping to within earshot, stealthily advancing within reach, this then was the source marooned in transitivity, flushed pink where sky spins and grips or tries but soaked it slithers off, its dazzle-shroud sagged sopping with new storylines, slid down in folds, pleats, bales of episodes. Lines aspired to mottoes, mottoes to a motionlessness tethered to reflections on void lagoons where intermittent light spelt far less : blemished forms of love loving fault must needs be filled but the field is made of faltering, we walk on thin ice, images that relay genital parts. Look, each of us knows what we could do with any of these. A peasant with his crippled back and upright broom dusting off the sun-gilded runway, a banker’s shouting ontic features crabbed and tentacular, crabbed and tentacular. Like everyone turns in on himself I saw the gathered looped and spooking out their children, these too stretched in their fire cavern, talk would shift about the board grinding thick lines of violence. Activity lights flashed, cycles juddered to a pit reprieve behind star-blasted rock pooling oil. Still within a smoke scarf three sit and talk and think to send a call through wintery clearances. Across the asphalt my bone vibrates. Tap Tap.       Buzz. Calendar beetles tap inside false ceilings, failing brands collapse into the flickering of a hearth. Clear light annuls red crackle, time-stamps every flash expiring assets show in. Look, to make my call I found my mouth, licked the barrier streaked with fuchsine, nibbled at the pith between the tree and bark. Red daddy, aren’t I big enough to walk, pick up my legs, my pace Look, I hack at overgrowth, too grown up, well-fed for jelly mould cars and download junket. Magenta freights a weary sky, heaved limbs abdicate. Who hankers to walk grass and thrift. Ankles pricked by gorse and heather. Who walks on creases now shale pockmarked with spots of tar. My ghost is trying its weight on stepping stones, look, it’s peeling off, weaned into the asphalt river. Ahead I see this huge container.

Your name is Diana Toy. And all you may have for breakfast is rice gruel. You can't spit it back into the cauldron for it would be unfilial. You can't ask for yam gruel for there is none. You can't hide it in the corner for it would surely be found, and then you would be served cold, stale rice gruel. This is the philosophy of your tong: you, the child, must learn to understand the universe through the port-of-entry, your mouth, to discern bitter from sweet, pungent from bland. You were told that the infant Buddha once devoured earth and spewed forth the wisdom of the ages. Meat or gruel, wine or ghee, even if it's gruel, even if it's nothing, that gruel, that nothingness will shine into the oil of your mother's scrap-iron wok, into the glare of your father's cleaver, and dance in your porcelain bowl. Remember, what they deny you won't hurt you. What they spare you, you must make shine, so shine, shine . . .

Tell me the way to the wedding Tell me the way to the war, Tell me the needle you’re threading I won’t raise my voice anymore. And tell me what axe you are grinding Where the boy on the bivouac believes, What reel you are unwinding For the girl in her bed who grieves. While behind a derrick’s girder He watches the sinking sun, He asks what he’ll do for murder And what he will do for fun. Will you read him the ways of war His Miranda rights in sin, Will you tell him what to ignore When he studies your discipline? He dozes off—but he shakes In a dream that he is the one Death finds abed and wakes Just as the night is done. Tell me what boats go ashore Riding the oil-dimmed tide, Red streamers and black in store For the boy with a pain in his side. And tell me where they are heading Tonight; now tell me the score. Tell me the way to their wedding I won’t raise my own voice anymore.

We got sent home early & no one knew why.I think we are at war! I yelled to my sister knapsacks ringing against our backs. I copy -catted from Frances who whispered it when the teachers got silent. Can’t blame me for taking a good idea. I collect words where I find them. I’m young & no one around knows where my parents are from. A map on our wall & I circle all the places I want to be. My auntie, not-blood but could be, runs the oil through my scalp. Her fingers play the strands of my hair. The house smells like badam. My uncle, not-blood but could be, soaks them in a bowl of water. My auntie says my people might be Afghani. I draw a ship on the map. I write Afghani under its hull. I count all the oceans, blood & not-blood, all the people I could be, the whole map, my mirror. The kids at school ask me where I’m from & I have no answer. I’m a silent girl, a rig ready to blow. The towers fell two weeks ago & I can’t say blow out loud or everyone will hate me. They all make English their own, say that’s the bomb. I know that word’s not meant for me but I collect words where I find them. I practice at night, the crater it makes of my mouth. I whisper it to my sheets, bombbombbombbombbombbombbombbombbombbombbombbombbomb a little symphony, so round. I look up & make sure no one heard.

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite. I said I wouldn't dammit: No tears. I'm stone. I'm flesh. My clouded reflection eyes me like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. I turn this way—the stone lets me go. I turn that way—I'm inside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Vietnam Veterans Memorial Located in Washington D.C., the Memorial is roughly 500 feet wide, and the names of soldiers who died in Vietnam are etched on its black granite walls. For more information and photos, visit The Wall-USA . again, depending on the light to make a difference. I go down the 58,022 names 58,022 names The number of names of dead soldiers etched on the wall at the time of Komunyakaa’s composing of this poem. As of 2009, there are now 58,261 names listed on the Memorial, of which, approximately 1,200 are listed as missing in action (MIAs) or prisoners of war (POWs). , half-expecting to find my own in letters like smoke. I touch the name Andrew Johnson Andrew Johnson A soldier from the poet’s hometown of Bogalusa, Louisiana; also the name of 17th U.S. president (1865-69), who succeeded Lincoln and denied freed slaves equal protection under the law by vetoing the Civil Rights Bill and the Freedman’s Bureau Bill in 1866. ; I see the booby trap's white flash. Names shimmer on a woman's blouse but when she walks away the names stay on the wall. Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's wings cutting across my stare. The sky. A plane in the sky. A white vet's image floats closer to me, then his pale eyes look through mine. I'm a window. He's lost his right arm inside the stone. In the black mirror a woman’s trying to erase names: No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

is not a man being swallowed by a fish with eyes like eight-point throwing stars it’s a man being swallowed by a war a man being taken into the mouth of a woman or being swallowed by his work it’s a man traveling far inside a book a man being swallowed up in smoke he swallows the smoke, that blends around him like a thought it’s a man being swallowed by a sound he shapes it so he lives inside a song of a man being swallowed by his kin, his skin a man being swallowed by the State (Leviathan in 1948) It’s a man being swallowed by another man literally, eaten as a pathway to god it’s a man being swallowed by a sight he cannot reach, cannot touch, cannot trace it’s a man who won’t recognize his face who can’t fit the parts, or find the place it’s a man in triumph over death who laughs and beats the dust from his clothes a man tasting dust inside the laugh it’s a man who listens to the clock a man with nothing to exchange a rude man, his twin he leaves behind it’s a man who wants to be a bride a man being swallowed by his fault with something old to show and new to hide it’s a man who tries to haul the rope a man who stooping can’t provide a man who can’t forget his name it’s a man who doesn’t know his worth it’s a man being swallowed by his wrath his youth, yield, luck, the law, his fear, the fog, his fame it’s a man being swallowed by a coat his father’s coat, he smells of the fit a man being swallowed by his vows it’s a man softly squeezing for the vein he never finds it, he’s minding the road it’s a man being swallowed by a room in which he finds a man being swallowed by a fish it’s a man who thinks what’s in a man who exits into night at closing time the figure of a man being swallowed by a fish.

We were told that the cloud cover was a blanket about to settle into the shape of the present which, if we wanted to imagine it as a person, would undoubtedly look startled— as after a verbal berating or in advance of a light pistol-whipping. The camera came and went, came and went, like a masked man trying to light a too-damp fuse. The crew was acting like a litter of mimics trying to make a killing. Anything to fill the vacuum of time. The wind whirred and tracked the clouds. The credits, we were told, would take the form of a semi-scrawl, urban-sprawl, graffiti-style typography. The soundtrack would include instrumental versions of "Try a Little Tenderness." Our handler, who was walking backward in order to maintain constant eye contact with us, nearly stumbled over a girl in a sheath and pearls who was misting a shelf of hothouse flowers. While the two apologized to each other, we stood and watched the fine spray settle over the leaves and drip onto the floor. On the way out, we passed a door with a small window reinforced with wired glass through which we could see a nurse positioning a patient on a table. We swore afterward we'd heard her say, "Lie perfectly still and look only inward." A clock chimed and as the others were audibly counting backwards from five to zero, I thought I heard someone say, "Now let go of this morbid attachment to things."

“He is either alive and well or alive and not too well or not alive.” —Donald Rumsfeld You haven’t heard from your father in six months and you can’t bring yourself to call. In Bengal, farmers wore masks on the backs of their heads to ward off tigers, who, one supposes, wouldn’t attack a man who was watching. If I don’t call, you thought, nothing is wrong. Each possibility is a cavern eaten out of limestone by water. Naming everything is a way of naming nothing. His family dropped away like cicada husks swept off tree trunks by rain. One brother, heart attack. His father’s two feet taken by diabetes, then his father by stroke. In a tornado, leave your windows ajar. A doorway for an earthquake. In a lightning storm, do not pick up the phone. Learn to see out the back of your head. His youngest brother, weeks dead before discovery: the couch where he died, face down, shadow of rotted flesh stained into fabric, ghost of a face. Imagination kills the living just as easily as it brings back the dead. In Turkey, they hang the nazar—teardrop of blue glass— on lintels, above beds, from the rearview mirror. To ward off evil, they say.

After every war someone has to clean up. Things won’t straighten themselves up, after all. Someone has to push the rubble to the side of the road, so the corpse-filled wagons can pass. Someone has to get mired in scum and ashes, sofa springs, splintered glass, and bloody rags. Someone has to drag in a girder to prop up a wall. Someone has to glaze a window, rehang a door. Photogenic it’s not, and takes years. All the cameras have left for another war. We’ll need the bridges back, and new railway stations. Sleeves will go ragged from rolling them up. Someone, broom in hand, still recalls the way it was. Someone else listens and nods with unsevered head. But already there are those nearby starting to mill about who will find it dull. From out of the bushes sometimes someone still unearths rusted-out arguments and carries them to the garbage pile. Those who knew what was going on here must make way for those who know little. And less than little. And finally as little as nothing. In the grass that has overgrown causes and effects, someone must be stretched out blade of grass in his mouth gazing at the clouds.