502 War poems

The bird’s-eye view abstracted from the bird. Cover me, says the soldier on the screen, I’m going in. We have the sense of being convinced, but of what? And by whom? The public is a hypothetical hole, a realm of pure disappearance, from which celestial matter explodes. I believe I can speak for everyone, begins the president, when I say famous last words.

Dark as the clouds of even, Ranked in the western heaven, Waiting the breath that lifts All the dread mass, and drifts Tempest and falling brand Over a ruined land;— So still and orderly, Arm to arm, knee to knee, Waiting the great event, Stands the Black Regiment. Down the long dusky line Teeth gleam and eyeballs shine; And the bright bayonet, Bristling and firmly set, Flashed with a purpose grand, Long ere the sharp command Of the fierce rolling drum Told them their time had come, Told them what work was sent For the Black Regiment. “Now,” the flag-sergeant cried, “Though death and hell betide, Let the whole nation see If we are fit to be Free in this land; or bound Down, like the whining hound,— Bound with red stripes of pain In our old chains again!” Oh, what a shout there went From the Black Regiment! “Charge!” Trump and drum awoke, Onward the bondmen broke; Bayonet and sabre-stroke Vainly opposed their rush. Through the wild battle’s crush, With but one thought aflush, Driving their lords like chaff, In the guns’ mouths they laugh; Or at the slippery brands Leaping with open hands, Down they tear man and horse, Down in their awful course; Tramping with bloody heel Over the crashing steel, All their eyes forward bent, Rushed the Black Regiment. “Freedom!” their battle-cry— “Freedom! or leave to die!” Ah! And they meant the word, Not as with us ’tis heard, Not a mere party shout: They gave their spirits out; Trusted the end to God, And on the gory sod Rolled in triumphant blood. Glad to strike one free blow, Whether for weal or woe; Glad to breathe one free breath, Though on the lips of death. Praying—alas! in vain!— That they might fall again, So they could once more see That burst to liberty! This was what “freedom” lent To this Black Regiment. Hundreds on hundreds fell; But they are resting well; Scourges and shackles strong Never shall do them wrong. Oh, to the living few, Soldiers, be just and true! Hail them as comrades tried; Fight with them side by side; Never, in field or tent, Scorn the Black Regiment.

The House is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks

It is not bad.  Let them play. Let the guns bark and the bombing-plane Speak his prodigious blasphemies. It is not bad, it is high time, Stark violence is still the sire of all the world’s values. What but the wolf’s tooth whittled so fine The fleet limbs of the antelope? What but fear winged the birds, and hunger Jewelled with such eyes the great goshawk’s head? Violence has been the sire of all the world’s values. Who would remember Helen’s face Lacking the terrible halo of spears? Who formed Christ but Herod and Caesar, The cruel and bloody victories of Caesar? Violence, the bloody sire of all the world’s values. Never weep, let them play, Old violence is not too old to beget new values.

This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling, Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms; But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing Startles the villages with strange alarms. Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary, When the death-angel touches those swift keys! What loud lament and dismal Miserere Will mingle with their awful symphonies! I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus, The cries of agony, the endless groan, Which, through the ages that have gone before us, In long reverberations reach our own. On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer, Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's song, And loud, amid the universal clamor, O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong. I hear the Florentine, who from his palace Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din, And Aztec priests upon their teocallis Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent's skin; The tumult of each sacked and burning village; The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns; The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage; The wail of famine in beleaguered towns; The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder, The rattling musketry, the clashing blade; And ever and anon, in tones of thunder The diapason of the cannonade. Is it, O man, with such discordant noises, With such accursed instruments as these, Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices, And jarrest the celestial harmonies? Were half the power, that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals or forts: The warrior's name would be a name abhorred! And every nation, that should lift again Its hand against a brother, on its forehead Would wear forevermore the curse of Cain! Down the dark future, through long generations, The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease; And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations, I hear once more the voice of Christ say, "Peace!" Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies! But beautiful as songs of the immortals, The holy melodies of love arise.

As I one evening sat before my cell, Methought a star did shoot into my lap. I rose and shook my clothes, as knowing well That from small fires comes oft no small mishap; When suddenly I heard one say, “Do as thou usest, disobey, Expel good motions from thy breast, Which have the face of fire, but end in rest.” I, who had heard of music in the spheres, But not of speech in stars, began to muse; But turning to my God, whose ministers The stars and all things are: “If I refuse, Dread Lord,” said I, “so oft my good, Then I refuse not ev’n with blood To wash away my stubborn thought; For I will do or suffer what I ought. “But I have also stars and shooters too, Born where thy servants both artilleries use. My tears and prayers night and day do woo And work up to thee; yet thou dost refuse. Not but I am (I must say still) Much more obliged to do thy will Than thou to grant mine; but because Thy promise now hath ev’n set thee thy laws. “Then we are shooters both, and thou dost deign To enter combat with us, and contest With thine own clay. But I would parley fain: Shun not my arrows, and behold my breast. Yet if thou shunnest, I am thine: I must be so, if I am mine. There is no articling with thee: I am but finite, yet thine infinitely.”

When the forests have been destroyed their darkness remains The ash the great walker follows the possessors Forever Nothing they will come to is real Nor for long Over the watercourses Like ducks in the time of the ducks The ghosts of the villages trail in the sky Making a new twilight Rain falls into the open eyes of the dead Again again with its pointless sound When the moon finds them they are the color of everything The nights disappear like bruises but nothing is healed The dead go away like bruises The blood vanishes into the poisoned farmlands Pain the horizon Remains Overhead the seasons rock They are paper bells Calling to nothing living The possessors move everywhere under Death their star Like columns of smoke they advance into the shadows Like thin flames with no light They with no past And fire their only future

My eye climbs a row of spoilers soldered into ailerons, cracked bay doors haphazarded into windows where every rivet bleeds contrails of rust. An hour ago, the doctor’s wand waved across my chest and I watched blood on a small screen get back-sucked into my weakened heart. It’s grown a hole I have to monitor: one torn flap shuddering an infinite ellipsis of gray stars back and forth.You’re the writer, the doctor said in French.Tell me what you see. Easier to stand in a courtyard full of tourists scrying shapes from this titanic Rorschach. Here’s a pump stub shaped like a hand; something celled, cavernously fluted as a lobster’s abdomen. How much work it must have taken to drag these bits out of pits of flame, from lake beds and rice paddies, and stack them in layers: the French planes heaped beneath the American ones, while the Englishwoman beside me peers into this mess of metals, trying to isolate one image from the rest. Ski boot buckle or tire pump, she muses at me, fossilized shark’s jaw, clothespin, wasp’s nest? According to the camera, it’s just a picture changing with each angle, relic turned to rib cage, chrome flesh to animal: all the mortal details enumerated, neutered. I watch her trace an aluminum sheet torched across a thruster as if wind had tossed a silk scarf over a face. If she pulled it back, would I find a body foreign as my own entombed in here, a thousand dog tags jangling in the dark? I tilt my head: the vision slides once more past me, each plane reassembling then breaking apart. Spikes of grief— or is it fury?—throb across the surface. Everything has a rip in it, a hole, a tear, the dim sounds of something struggling to pry open death’s cracked fuselage. White sparks, iron trails. My heart rustles in its manila folder. How the doctor smiled at the images I fed him:A row of trees, I said, pointing at my chart.Stone towers, a flock of backlit swallows— Now I kneel beside a cross of blades on which the Englishwoman tries to focus.Do you think I’ll get it all in the shot? she calls as she steps back. Steps back and back. Something like a knife sheath. Something like a saint’s skull. The sky floats past, horizon sucked into it. She won’t.

At noon in the desert a panting lizard waited for history, its elbows tense, watching the curve of a particular road as if something might happen. It was looking at something farther off than people could see, an important scene acted in stone for little selves at the flute end of consequences. There was just a continent without much on it under a sky that never cared less. Ready for a change, the elbows waited. The hands gripped hard on the desert.

They swing across the screen in brave array, Long British columns grinding the dark grass. Twelve months ago they marched into the grey Of battle; yet again behold them pass! One lifts his dusty cap; his hair is bright; I meet his eyes, eager and young and bold. The picture quivers into ghostly white; Then I remember, and my heart grows cold!