Home Alone with World War I

Hear the song I sing:
War's a horrid thing.
So I sing, sing sing...
Ding a ling a ling.

--Private S. Baldrick, "Goodbyeee" (Blackadder IV: Blackadder Goes Forth)

I.

And afterwards, it never was the same.
From overseas the blast reached Ezra's ears;
He passed the echo on, and made his name.

I learned to contemplate it without tears--
The specter of machine-guns giving birth
To modern literature and modern fears.

So, having studied in the sodden earth,
The germinating seedlings of our age,
With level eyes, and seen it was--not worth

The sacrifice, exactly, but--a stage,
That had to come-- the shattering, the blast,
The broken codes, exploded rules, the rage--

Why the annihilation of this cast
Of quailing, stolid schemers at the Somme
Should break the pane and sicken me at last

I do not understand. But as they come
Charging across unrealistic mud
And harmless prop barbed wire, I hear the hum

Of fear and faintness in my ears. No blood;
Just fade to black. Why should this detonate
When Siegfried Sassoon's oeuvre was a dud?

II

Perhaps because I am alone, it's late,
And I can't turn to you and talk it through;
Say--"Wholesale slaughter of the good and great

For no good reason--kill the brave, the true--
They got us used to that. We at our age
Can stomach what revolted elders--view

With measured grief and moderate outrage
The mass-murder of virtue, knowing now
It is assimilatable--a page

Within a book we know. So tell me how
This travesty could crack the tortoiseshell
And let the horror enter, and allow

My heart to pump as if I had the smell
Of their death in my nostrils? But it does.
I know now we've been tricked, and that in Hell

They smile to see us look on how it was,
And, thinking we learned something, fail to cry
Like wounded animals." All this because

You were not here, so I did not know why
It twisted up my stomach so to know
That even cowards and fast talkers die?

III

Before we both were born, I think they learned
That all true sympathy is built on fear.
They swore this time that they would not get burned.

No draft for this. No calls to volunteer.
Victory came to troops that were still fresh.
The combat never lasted out the year.

We never thought the monster might enmesh
Us in its trammels. So it never rose,
The queasy retch, the quiver in the flesh,

The acrid smell of gunsmoke in the nose.
We could not see ourselved through the disguise
They dressed the corpses in. Everyone knows

Nobody died that year--no one whose eyes
Reflected us. The editors were skilled.
I know now they did not invent their lies.

IV

When by the first blow the first man was killed
The first eyewitness praised the fallen dead,
His valor, honor, battle-courage--filled

The air with light and goodness. And the dread
Melted from all the listeners when they knew
That he had been divine. Once round the head

Of the deceased the golden fire flew,
The multitude knew he was not like them;
So they got on with what they had to do,
Glad glory only came to holy men.

Virgil In Baghdad

February 1991

Scilicet is superis labor est, ea cura quietus sollicitat.

Because it has to be one
Or the other. Did Vulcan
And his lumbering one-eyed crew
Lift their massive, vein-bound arms
To bang the Scud together?
Was the Patriot held over
Livid magma, born in heat
Blasting from the core of earth and hell?
Do those tanks stagger up to light
Through a cleft in the silicon crust?
And with his leather apron
Bound round his waist, sweat hissing from
His brow into the flames that need
No fuel and burn their own red hunger,
Is the twisted smith forging
America triumphant on a shield?
Does Allecto stride the desert sands
Blotting the sky out with her shrieking locks,
Hold out two twisting vipers dropping bile
From squat black shiny heads, to let them spit
Their burning poison on the oil fields--
Do the coalition forces scream and feel
The adders slip inside the khaki shirts
And close their fangs? Does she ride the smoke,
Laughing the hot air into acid fire?

Because it has to be one
Or the other. And either Hell
In all its pomp and glory blasts
Through Baghdad now--

Or else,
Aeneas drove his troopships on the beach,
Encamped, and sat while in a smoky room
The Olympian Security Council
Discussed sanctions and tactics. When the rout
Of tinpot gods, tenpenny deities,
Hercules fat on nectar in his old
Motheaten catskin playing with his maps
And pins, Jupiter forging thunderbolts
Of wornout rhetoric and counting votes,
While savage Juno, piqued and malcontent
Over some ill-made speech, works underhand
To split the coalition--when this gang
Made their decision, lovely Iris called
The press conference, denouncing Turnus as
A brazen tyrant. Aeneas got the word
From Venus, and the battle plodded forth.
And when Pallas was struck, when Eurylaus
And Nisus fell together in the wood,
When Trojans vomited their purple blood
In waves across their shining armorplates,
Pius Aeneas would hear Venus say,
From where she sat, composed above the clouds
Telegenic, queenly, confident,
"Parce metui, my son. The war proceeds
According to schedule."

Because it has to be one
Or the other.

Personal/Political

Shoulder Angel

February 12, 2003

Our President Gives a Press Conference, March 6, 2003

I wrote this in a white-hot burst of rage immediately after listening to this travesty.

I. LISTENING IN ON THE DRIVE HOME

Down a tunnel
carved through solid darkness
I am shooting
at seventy miles per hour
in a straight line
and every question
has the same
answer.

II. MESSAGE FROM THE WOMAN WHO SHOULD BE MY MOTHER-IN-LAW

III. NO, I'M NOT A POET, I'M JUST...INSPIRED

IV. IT COULD HAPPEN

Flowers

April 8, 2003

I'm not sure this qualifies as poetry, but I didn't know where else to put it. It was inspired by the news that in Basra a little girl had presented a British soldier with a small bunch of flowers.

--We need flowers.
--What for?
--They want flowers. I don't know why.
--Flowers?
--What are they going to do with flowers?
--I don't know. It's important to them. Is your garden still--
--No water for two weeks in this heat and you're asking for flowers?
--What is it now? What do they want now?
--Flowers.
--Oh my God, oh my God.
--Are you sure it was flowers? The translator wasn't--
--Oh my God, oh my God, they'll kill us all.
--Please. It wasn't the translator. I saw it on the screen.
--They didn't say they want flowers?
--No, but they do.
--How do you know? You don't speak--
--I was watching with the doctor, he told me. He understands them.
--We should ask the translator. If the doctor made a mistake--
--No. We don't ask. That's the whole point. They don't know we know they want them.
--If you give them flowers and they don't want them they'll kill us all.
--Why don't we ask? To make sure?
--If they know we know they want them it won't work.
--You have lost your mind.
--Listen--
--You have lost your mind and now you think we can give them flowers and--
--It's nonsensical. A mistake. Flowers? What could they do with them?
--Listen, will someone just find the grocer and ask him--
--He is dead. God, you don't--
--I'm sorry. I forgot. He was alive yesterday.
--Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.
--Someone take him out of here. Listen. It was a show they made for their own kind. They don't know we can see it. It's a secret.
--Then when they find we know it they'll kill us all.
--No. Not a secret. It's...I don't know. They want flowers.
--Then they should tell us--
--or just take. Take, why not, who can stop them?
--That's the point of the flowers.
--What? What? Did you hear--did you hear--
--It's nothing. An overflight. The point is they can't take the flowers. We have to give them.
--Crazy. They can take anything.
--Has anybody got a garden that still has flowers in it?
--Why flowers?
--Does anyone still have a bunch in a vase on a table--
--Does anyone still have a table?
--Be serious. If the gardens have died and the markets--
--Nobody comes to the market.
--I know. If the markets are dead, then isn't there anything growing wild?
--But why flowers?
--I don't know. They expect it.
--There's more shade out by the bombed school, some of the garden is still growing.
--They expect it?
--It's what they came for.
--They why don't they tell us?
--That's what they came for. To make us guess.
--Are they mad?
--Of course they're mad!
--What about these?
--Oh God. Oh God.
--But you did say flowers--
--Yes. They'll do. Oh God.
--Who's going to give them--
--Don't look here. I'm not ready to die.
--Oh God. These are the only flowers you found?
--Does it matter what kind?
--No. No, not to them.
--A little girl, that's safest.
--Yes, that's safest.
--Not my girl, for damn sure.
--I will do it.
--But is your mother--
--She doesn't hear any more, she doesn't talk, I can't ask.
--You are sure they want flowers.
--Yes.
--Not something else.
--Yes.
--All right, go then. Walk slowly. Hold them like this. Smile.
--Yes, like that. Exactly like that.
--The smile! Her mother should see her.
--Slowly. And keep your hands still.
--Why flowers?
--I dont' know. It's important.
--There! She is coming back.
--Oh God, oh God.
--You're a brave girl. You're a good girl. We'll tell your mother when she's feeling better.
--What did they say? What did they say?
--I don't know. They smiled.
--That's good, isn't it?
--Yes.
--Will they leave now?

the end