Now he has silver in him. When sometime
Death shall boil down unnecessary fat
To reach the nub of our identity,
When in the run of crime
The skull is rifled for the gold in teeth,
And chemistry has eaten from the spine
Superfluous life and vigor, why then he
Will show a richness to be wondered at,
And shall be thought a mine
Whose claim and stake are stone and floral wreath.
It was a poem
men took because it said ovary
didn’ t take my
political poems
they took the one that said ovary
Are you sure it was because it
said ovary?
Yes, for them that’ s logical.
---------------------------
Destroy another
city
What
else
is war for? So
you’ ll go down
each of you does. dies in
whirlwind
“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
They explained to me the bloody bandages
On the floor in the maternity ward in Rochester, N. Y.,
Cured the backache I acquired bowing to my old master,
Made me stop putting thumbtacks round my bed.
They showed me an officer on horseback,
Waving a saber next to a burning farmhouse
And a barefoot woman in a nightgown,
Throwing stones after him and calling him Lucifer.
The river brought down
dead horses, dead men
and military debris,
indicative of war
or official acts upstream,
but it went by, it all
goes by, that is the thing
about the river. Then
a soldier on a log
went by. He seemed drunk
and we asked him Why
had he and this junk
come down to us so
from the past upstream.
“Friends,” he said, “the great
Battle of Granicus
has just been won
by all of the Greeks except
the Lacedaemonians and
myself: this is a joke
America I’ ve given you all and now I’ m nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
I can’ t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don’ t feel good don’ t bother me.
I won’ t write my poem till I’ m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
I
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.
For whom the possessed sea littered, on both shores,
Ruinous arms; being fired, and for good,
To sound the constitution of just wars,
Men, in their eloquent fashion, understood.
