502 War poems

“Flowery mantle.” “Homeric sacrifice?” “noise of darkness” “fear of darkness” “now mantle of innocence” “King of his death now” “Home” “I’ve come home” “He said, ‘I’ve come home’” “They were sacrificed for nothing, for distant” “instants of thought” “All for your thinking” “He said, ‘I’ve come home; I've finally come home’ then he died” “flowers” “Magnolias & lilies” “innocent now” “I’ve come home. Who’s there? at home? all the dead?” “To come home from the war” “years after” “To die” “To wear mantle light honey” “mantle dead white” “in sunlight, in late” “Homeric?” “he said it was hideous” “all of it” “hideous” “every instant in Nam” “theatre of worsts” “now mantle of white” “phosphorous & lilies?” “trees now lean down” “over our faces” “Tell details of battle?” “As” “in an epic?” “As” “in lies?” “We don’t want that now” “We want only our mother of dirt” “our mantle of white” “want each other of soul; and” “we want” “our mother of spirit” (“rich sweet in dirt”) “we want” “our father” “of leaves” “We want our fate fragmented to air for our children to breathe;” “light on water for widows to think near” “moonlight on water to ease you” “we want no poet, we want our homes in the earth” “that’s all we can have” “want no place in history or poetry” “want our wanderings our sorrows, after the war not remembered,” “we want not to pain her” “we want our love mingled” “with yours” “no place in history” “only in love” “remove us from history,” “All of us sacrificed” “all for a thought” “They played with our souls.” “Used our souls to fight, be their willfulness” “willfulness” “we were made their willfulness,” “nothing but that—” “And you too, you yielded, one way or another” “to their will.” “They” “who are the subject” “of all history” “& of poems” “as if” “we have ever, in all ways” “yielded to them” “by speaking of” “always speaking of” “Kings” “presidents” “the Great Men” “their mistresses” “Generals” “Communist Kings” “Leaders” “Warriors” “West Point of Greeks” “West Point of Greeks against” “West Point of Trojans” “Isn’t it more beautiful, under the Earth?” “Or to be sunlight, not history?” “Now I can love, & only” “now” “Remove us from history but not from your air” “History is willfulness” “is” “precious parts” “History’s for those” “who ask not” “to be forgiven” “We ask to be forgiven” “& loved” “No, we ask” “to be absolved” “And to be” “elemental” “ask leaves & wind” “Ask leaves bending down towards our faces” “Ask light & dirt” “we ask” “our children” “we ask our wives” “Ask that they live” “We ask to be” “with the ones that we killed” “To history” “saying nothing” “being that” (“nothing”) “& to history” “having been” “nothing.” * “In this moment” “before” “anyone, ever” “died” “before we were born?” “in this moment forever before” “before we went to a war” “Before we died” “In this moment, now” “In this moment before, it is not before” “In this very moment” “where is it” “where we haven’t died” “or died inside” “In this moment we haven’t” “in this moment, no one” “in this moment, no one has ever, died” (“But I have been born”) “in this moment” “where, where is it” “in moment” “who’s here” “Catch it catch it” “moment where we are” “merely as it is autonomous,” “autonomous moment” “Without a war” “without a guilt,” “Can we exist” “Outside of what was?” “in the air of our thoughtless, female, moment” “the air of our moment” “not grievous not iron” “moment, not air” “but air of our moment” (“woman-made?”) “faithful, faithful & boundless” “reticent & light” “fond, & kindly” “not reticent but shiny,” “morning-starry, not bloody” “not bloody, in the morning” “in the star” “it is a star” “it is autonomous” “star & it’s mild” “Is it a little” “of us” “from before” “we were born?” (“that was never”) (“I know”) “It is now” “autonomous” “moment of white,” “white flowers, stars & white flowers,” “not before we were born, in this moment of our childhood” “have we our childhood” “in this moment he has his childhood, I think, it is center of” “moment, of childhood” “center of, moment” “wings of his pigeons” “white & grey wings” “moment a feathery” “center of senses” “center of sensation, is this moment” “Center, as sensation falls away” “He has his love” “this moment” “forever” “center of brown eyes” “seen through his eyes” “Only through” “the eyes” “the real eyes” “of the dead” “this moment” “through his eyes” “as child, as childhood” “Only through” “the personality” “can this be” “of the dead” “the lovely person” “holding” “this moment” “this moment in place” “this moment forever” “center of sensation” “Soldiers, we are center” “of the morning” “we are moment” “we are dearest” “we are heart” “Soldiers,” “we are pleasing” “we are center” “we are moment” “are not soldiers” “never soldiers” “never were.” * “Mask now” “is complies” “complies” “with the forms (too much of everything, everywhere”) “All of this is” “the mask” “my mother’s mask” “& mine” “wronglike forms, too many of” “Complying, to live here” “always, more complying” “Too many things” “machines” “too many” “too many clothes” “cheap roses” “kleenexes” “membranous” “bags, of plastic” “Too many ideas” “vocabularies no color” “too many paintings” “too many songs” “too many Tarot decks” “& poems” “& books” “Too many” “things to eat” “too many” “machines” “magic machines” “too much magic” “much too much of it” “Stupor” “distress” “& abandoning of others” “too much news” “news” “everything” “made the same” “too many names” “too much knowledge” (“knowledge, so endless” “is nothing”) “A war” “more news, more to know about, to know” “Excuse for anger” “indignation” “you can still keep your money” “know the terms of news” “terms” “& Not be nature” “don’t be nature” “mute” “not knowing the” “terms” “Know what news knows” “What words know” “Do words know?” “No they don’t, only flesh knows only

Of the sleeves, I remember their weight, like wet wool, on my arms, and the empty ends which hung past my hands. Of the body of the shirt, I remember the large buttons and larger buttonholes, which made a rack of wheels down my chest and could not be quickly unbuttoned. Of the collar, I remember its thickness without starch, by which it lay against my clavicle without moving. Of my trousers, the same—heavy, bulky, slow to give for a leg, a crowded feeling, a molasses to walk in. Of my boots, I remember the brittle soles, of a material that had not been made love to by any natural substance, and the laces: ropes to make prisoners of my feet. Of the helmet, I remember the webbed, inner liner, a brittle plastic underwear on which wobbled the crushing steel pot then strapped at the chin. Of the mortar, I remember the mortar plate, heavy enough to kill by weight, which I carried by rope. Of the machine gun, I remember the way it fit behind my head and across my shoulder blades as I carried it, or, to be precise, as it rode me. Of tactics, I remember the likelihood of shooting the wrong man, the weight of the rifle bolt, the difficulty of loading while prone, the shock of noise. For earplugs, some used cigarette filters or toilet paper. I don’t hear well now, for a man of my age, and the doctor says my ears were damaged and asks if I was in the Army, and of course I was but then a wounded eardrum wasn’t much in the scheme.

Once it smiled a silent dell Where the people did not dwell; They had gone unto the wars, Trusting to the mild-eyed stars, Nightly, from their azure towers, To keep watch above the flowers, In the midst of which all day The red sun-light lazily lay. Now each visitor shall confess The sad valley’s restlessness. Nothing there is motionless— Nothing save the airs that brood Over the magic solitude. Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees That palpitate like the chill seas Around the misty Hebrides! Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven That rustle through the unquiet Heaven Uneasily, from morn till even, Over the violets there that lie In myriad types of the human eye— Over the lilies there that wave And weep above a nameless grave! They wave:—from out their fragrant tops External dews come down in drops. They weep:—from off their delicate stems Perennial tears descend in gems.

1 The old watch: their thick eyes puff and foreclose by the moon. The young, heads trailed by the beginnings of necks, shiver, in the guarantee they shall be bodies. In the frog pond the vapor trail of a SAC bomber creeps, I hear its drone, drifting, high up in immaculate ozone. 2 And I hear, coming over the hills, America singing, her varied carols I hear: crack of deputies' rifles practicing their aim on stray dogs at night, sput of cattleprod, TV going on about the smells of the human body, curses of the soldier as he poisons, burns, grinds, and stabs the rice of the world, with open mouth, crying strong, hysterical curses. 3 And by paddies in Asia bones wearing a few shadows walk down a dirt road, smashed bloodsuckers on their heel, knowing flesh thrown down in the sunshine dogs shall eat and flesh flung into the air shall be seized by birds, shoulder blades smooth, unmarked by old feather-holes, hands rivered by blue, erratic wanderings of the blood, eyes crinkled shut at almost seeing the drifting sun that gives us our lives.

there was a frozen tree that I wanted to paint but the shells came down and in Vegas looking across at a green sunshade at 3:30 in the morning, I died without nails, without a copy of the Atlantic Monthly, the windows screamed like doves moaning the bombing of Milan and I went out to live with the rats but the lights were too bright and I thought maybe I'd better go back and sit in a poetry class: a marvelous description of a gazelle is hell; the cross sits like a fly on my window, my mother’s breath stirs small leaves in my mind; and I hitch-hiked back to L.A. through hangover clouds and I pulled a letter from my pocket and read it and the truckdriver said, what’s that? and I said, there's some gal up North who used to sleep with Pound, she's trying to tell me that H.D. was our greatest scribe; well, Hilda gave us a few pink Grecian gods in with the chinaware, but after reading her I still have 140 icicles hanging from my bones. I'm not going all the way to L.A., the truckdriver said. it's all right, I said, the calla lilies nod to our minds and someday we’ll all go home together. in fact, he said, this is as far as we go. so I let him have it; old withered whore of time your breasts taste the sour cream of dreaming . . . he let me out in the middle of the desert; to die is to die is to die, old phonographs in cellars, joe di maggio, magazines in with the onions . . . an old Ford picked me up 45 minutes later and, this time, I kept my mouth shut.

(JUTLAND) 1916 Not in the thick of the fight, Not in the press of the odds, Do the heroes come to their height, Or we know the demi-gods. That stands over till peace. We can only perceive Men returned from the seas, Very grateful for leave. They grant us sudden days Snatched from their business of war; But we are too close to appraise What manner of men they are. And, whether their names go down With age-kept victories, Or whether they battle and drown Unreckoned, is hid from our eyes. They are too near to be great, But our children shall understand When and how our fate Was changed, and by whose hand. Our children shall measure their worth. We are content to be blind . . . But we know that we walk on a new-born earth With the saviours of mankind.

Green miles of leafy peace are spread Over these ranks, unseen and serried; Screening the trenches with their dead And living men already buried. The rains beat down, the torrents flow Into each cold and huddling cave; And over them the beet-fields grow, A fortress gentle as a grave. “Morose, impatient, sick at heart, With rasping nerves and twitching muscles, We cannot even sleep; we start With every twig that snaps or rustles. Sought always by an unseen foe Over our heads the bullets fly; But more than these, we fear the snow, The silent shrapnel of the sky. “Yonder our colonel stalks and grieves, Meeting the storm with thoughts more stormy; But we, we sit and watch the leaves Fall down, a torn and crumpled army. We mourn for every leaf that lies, As though it were a comrade slain; Each was a shelter from the eyes Of every prying aeroplane. . . ”

The shape of it bending like an eel or disfigured quarter moon, pink and green and brown, like a rainbow trout. The wall along my bed covered with the map I cut from the newspaper, and next to it the fishing calendar from Abonauder’s Texaco. The square cages of days with their numerals and effigies of moon and fish shaded to indicate the shape of the moon, the hunger of the fish. The white bread stripped of its crust, dampened, then dusted with flour, compressed into a tight ball, wrapped in foil and chilled all night. A piece of it pressed and shaped on the tip of an Eagle Claw hook, then lowered into the nesting holes of blue gill. The plastic bobber floating on the surface like a silent doorbell. A whole world of cause and effect, framed day-by-day and week-by-week. The passage of time as a kind of game in which I transferred numbers from the newspaper to the calendar. The body counts and their categories of NVRA, Marines, Montagnards. And each morning I put a bold X through the previous day not to erase or forget it but to connect the corners, make four triangles of the square. And it was rare if not impossible to catch the blue gill that swam and swam around the tidy pebble craters of their nests, or coax them out except in hostile swerves and feints toward the bait that hung like a balloon of gravity over their homes, a suspicious egg pouch or cocoon, something a storm might have dislodged from the bank and blown like a feared gift into the water, a thing swallowed whole then run with until the line played out and the hook set fast.

It doesn’t matter A damn what’s playing— In the dead of winter You go, days of 1978— 79, and we went Because the soldiers were beautiful And doomed as Asian jungles Kept afire Christ-like In the hopeless war I did not go to in the end Because it ended. The 20 th century? It was a war Between peasants on the one side, Hallucinations on the other. A peasant is a fire that burns But is not consumed. His movie never ends. It will be beautiful Every winter of our lives, my love, As Christ crushes fire into his wounds And the wounds are a jungle. Equally, no matter when their movies end, Hallucinations destroy the destroyers. That’s all. There has never been a President of the United States. And the 21 st century? Hallucination vs. hallucination In cold battle, in dubious battle, No battle at all because the peasants Have gone away far Into the lost traveler’s dream, Into a passage from Homer, A woodcutter’s hillside Peacetime superstition movie. On a cold night, Hector. On a cold night, Achilles. Around the savage and the maniac The woodcutter draws a ring of fire. It burns all winter long. He never tires of it And for good reason: Every face of the flames is doomed and beautiful; Every spark that shoots out into the freezing air Is God’s truth Given us all over again In the bitter weather of men’s Hallucinations. There has never been A President of the United States. There has never been a just war. There has never been any life Beyond this circle of firelight Until now if now is no dream but an Asia.

Vigil strange I kept on the field one night; When you my son and my comrade dropt at my side that day, One look I but gave which your dear eyes return’d with a look I shall never forget, One touch of your hand to mine O boy, reach’d up as you lay on the ground, Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle, Till late in the night reliev’d to the place at last again I made my way, Found you in death so cold dear comrade, found your body son of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,) Bared your face in the starlight, curious the scene, cool blew the moderate night-wind, Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battle-field spreading, Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the fragrant silent night, But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh, long, long I gazed, Then on the earth partially reclining sat by your side leaning my chin in my hands, Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you dearest comrade—not a tear, not a word, Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son and my soldier, As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole, Vigil final for you brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your death, I faithfully loved you and cared for you living, I think we shall surely meet again,) Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appear’d, My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop’d well his form, Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head and carefully under feet, And there and then and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his grave, in his rude-dug grave I deposited, Ending my vigil strange with that, vigil of night and battle-field dim, Vigil for boy of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,) Vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil I never forget, how as day brighten’d, I rose from the chill ground and folded my soldier well in his blanket, And buried him where he fell.