Life contracts and death is expected,
As in a season of autumn.
The soldier falls.
He does not become a three-days personage,
Imposing his separation,
Calling for pomp.
Death is absolute and without memorial,
As in a season of autumn,
When the wind stops,
When the wind stops and, over the heavens,
The clouds go, nevertheless,
In their direction.
Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment,
Little souls who thirst for fight,
These men were born to drill and die.
The unexplained glory flies above them,
Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom—
A field where a thousand corpses lie.
Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
Swift, blazing flag of the regiment,
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of slaughter,
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.
Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
This poem opens War Is Kind and Other Lines (1899.)
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
On a hike,
I come upon a tree
Raised up on its roots,
As if in mid-stride --
A long, cartoonish stride
That stretches across the trail.
But the tree doesn't stir --
No matter how quietly I wait;
No matter how long I wait.
Oh, how I wish to catch the tree
As it flees.
in a flat, wide river:
something juts up
from the water --
far in the distance
for an instant,
i startle:
seeing it as an
extended arm...
like that Stevie Smith
poem, but i discover
it's neither waving,
nor drowning, but
merely protruding...
a dead limb
stuck in the river,
drag & pull balanced,
waiting to be
carried away.
I cut myself upon the thought of you
And yet I come back to it again and again,
A kind of fury makes me want to draw you out
From the dimness of the present
And set you sharply above me in a wheel of roses.
Then, going obviously to inhale their fragrance,
I touch the blade of you and cling upon it,
And only when the blood runs out across my fingers
Am I at all satisfied.
What a view --
Lying on one's back
In a strange land,
Seeing familiar skies,
&
Unfamiliar faces,
And wondering what kind
Of strange beast
They take one for --
On one's back,
In the churchyard
Of a strange land.
An unfamiliar horse --
Saddled but riderless --
Cautiously ambles
Into the village.
Its saddle, bags, and coat
Spattered in black --
Really, rust-red on brown.
The villagers want nothing
To do with it,
But each sneaks it food
And lets it water at their
Tank.
Crisis arises
From the depths
Of intended perfection --
"Intended" because all
We can ever do is
Aim & release.
It is more an act of luck
To hit the bullseye
Than to miss.
Bullseyes don't occur because
Of a lack of adverse forces
At work.
They occur because of some
Fortuitous balancing
Of adverse forces.
Trudging into lapping waves
On a dim and dusky eve.
Chest deep
One pops up, pressing one's chest
Onto the water,
And swims toward a distant
Silhouetted rock outcrop.
But it doesn't stay silhouetted.
Soon, one is heading into
A grand, black abyss,
There is no shape in this world,
Only the feel of limbs -- pulling & kicking.
Sounds grow ever more feeble --
And ever more rare --
Until the smell of seawater becomes
A bright and vivid sensory experience --
Layered & textured.
Rolling onto one's back, one can see
Patches of sparkling stars
In the cloud gaps.
One lays upon the waves --
Feeling as though one conforms to them
As one floats like a piece of driftwood --
And sees the twinkle of distant stars,
In a world too vast to understand.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 