by Tom Kuhn
We saw the red steep flames
Striking up through smoke into the black sky.
In the fields there in a close stillness
Crackling
A tree was burning.
The shocked stricken branches reached up high
Black, danced around wildly
Crazily by a red rain of sparks.
Waves of the tide of fire broke through the fog.
Crazy dry leaves, terrifying, danced
In jubilation, free, and blackened
In mockery around the old trunk.
But grand and motionless shining into the night
Like an old warrior, tired, dead tired
But regal in his distress
The burning tree stood.
And suddenly flings up its black stricken branches
And the crimson flame sweeps up the height of it—
A while it stands tall in the black sky
Then the trunk, in a red dance of sparks
Cracks and collapses.
The fool
Has a face like snow, so white
And cracked like a wall of rock.
And through his eyes’ troubled look
Shows an extinguished light.
His features are as stiff as wood . . .
So he sits in a corner, the fool, alone. – – –
He has the eyes of a child, so good
And there’s an odd misfit between
Their extinguished former fire
And their dull distraction now. – – –
And his face has a dead man’s stare . . .
His mother died today and he
The poor fool must sit there
Grieving in motley. – – –
Ash Wednesday
The town lies grey and the red of dawn is dimming
Softly through the streets in the half-light day is coming—
Through the streets a cold shiver is coming this way
And in the distance the bells are tolling heavily.
They announce in muffled tribulation
That the great Christ’s dying has begun.
In one of the last grey little houses
In the dawn’s dim light, in stillness
Pierrot lies stiff and dead
And a poor old woman is weeping by his bed.
The forgotten
They live somewhere, and where they die
The place is alien
And brutally life passes by
And over them and on.
They lived and died and fought their best
And brought their children up
And, far-forgotten, come at last
In glory to a stop.
Gethsemane
And it happened in that night while the stars
In the heavens wept and the Son
Of God knelt amid the splendour of spectral flowers
And in a strange key the airless breeze
Sang in the park, that an angel floated from Heaven
And wafted through the ancient grey trees
To him whose soul was quaking in agony
In a dialogue of prayer with God.
And the Angel spoke, saying: See
A thousand people wait
Groaning in their need for your sacrifice. How could
You watch them die disconsolate?
For a long while he comforted the Christ:
“All are waiting . . .”
Then he rose up tall and strode away from him
Through the night garden
And saw the disciples asleep as he passed by them
– – – All are waiting – – –
His face darkened, and in haste
And afraid he quitted the dreaming garden.
Professor Sil Maria
There’s an old story, rarely told
Concerning a professor in Pia
He gazed so hard at the stars he failed
To watch over his wife and child
Did Professor Sil Maria.
Night after night he gazed at the stars
And wrote in a thick book
While in the bedroom all the hours
Of every night his wife shed silent tears . . .
And that was his bad luck.
One night she ripped the book from him
Fed it to the fire and angrily fled
Into the dark and left S.M.
The professor, the husband, alone with the grim
Fact that he was dead.
A modern legend
Evening blew over the battlefield.
The enemy had been overcome.
The ringing telegraph wires filed
The tidings home.
Thereupon at one end of the world a cry
Rose up and smashed on the dome of the sky
Out of raving mouths a howling spilled
And swelled to heaven, drunken, wild.
Cursing, a thousand lips turned white
A thousand hands clenched in savage hate.
At the world’s other end then yells of joy
Rose up and smashed on the dome of the sky
Jubilation, ravings, furious glee
They filled their lungs, they breathed free.
A thousand lips squirmed in the old prayer
A thousand hands folded, devout, secure.
And the telegraph wires
Sang through the night hours
Of the dead who lay in the field where they dropped – – –
And then among friend and foe it was quiet once more.
– – – – – – – –
Only the mothers wept
Over here—over there.
Hans Lody
You died alone
A lonely death on some grey dawn
Those who wished you dead
Walked with you, gave you your last bread.
No song, no honour in your time of need.
But it was for this your life is done:
That one bright sunlit morn
German songs shall ring out above your grave
German flags in the golden light shall wave
And German hands strew blossoms in the sun.
Golden fruits hang . . .
Golden fruits hang
Into our hands. The girls
Lure us in along
The greenwood ways by their giggles.
Through the bushes, nearer
Your little red jacket shows up
Like the red banner
Of men marching in step.
Wind rings in the dead
Trees the hour of evening
I kiss your red
Mouth that is warm and living.
The mother’s name
A thing the nurses time after time relate
Of severely wounded men
Is that they become very quiet
And children again.
That all the lads who are sick and in pain
Never forget the patient labour
And for every least kindness shown
Say thanks with strange fervour.
And that quite without cause
Tears will rise up in a man and he groans
A name—and it is
His mother he means.
And indeed at the end as though
All heaven were at their service as the light of life leaves them
The dying call for their mothers to come
No matter if the mothers died ten years ago . . .
Legend of Holy Saturday
Dedicated to the orphaned
They took the crown
Of thorns from his hair
Laid him in the grave
With not a prayer.
When they came to the burial site
The next night, harried and drawn
Behold, on the grave
Flowers had sprung from the thorn.
And amongst the blossoms in the evening grey
A wondrous noise:
A thrush picking its way
Raising its bright voice.
And it no longer seemed
That death was even in that place.
Lifted up over time and space
They smiled as in a bright dream
And went their ways.
Belgian fields
Murder, battles, villages in flames along the frontiers.
And at night the red lights of fire shine
Flickering and flaring into Belgium and are seen
In the blank fields of the endlessly burgeoning land, as in mirrors.
The artillery bellows and thunders
Day and night all the quickening springtime long
Thudding of guns and the tocsin’s clang
Overrun the flowering graveyards of Old Flanders.
When spring bubbles up out of the sea
Over fields and roads and meadows and farms
German soldiers come in busy swarms
With juddering harrows
And gouging ploughs
They break and churn the opening clay
And fling in handfuls
From hands still hot and swollen from their rifle barrels
Singing seed over the bridal earth.
Day and night the plough dug fields and their ridges
Roads, gardens and greens, through brushwood and quarry
Sparing no footpaths or boundaries
Compelled by the iron fist of Germany
Day and night the plough dug deeper into the enemy’s earth.
And in the ploughlands the corn showed through.
While in the distance war
Stamped, bellowed and blazed as before
Out of the pit of buried rage there rose
When clod and shoots were steaming in the summer haze
Strongly the yield. From the bodies of the dead it drew
Its strength. From rotting youth, from the earth’s bloody trough.
Yes, the joined hands
Of dead enemies and friends
Raised, as a sacrifice, flowering
Life for the sun’s blessing
And out of the earth of God’s little acre the rotted dead
Over the breathing land, spread
Wide open into the sun,
The victorious living were given the bread of heaven.
Through the roaring nights the fires of war appear
Over Belgium’s flowering acres like flickering ghosts in a mirror
And by day from the heaving seas of corn, like echoes
Of the din of the battles in France, to heaven rise
Shot through with sun, the iron-heavy
Songs of the victorious power of Germany
That in the tilth of the dead
Dug itself fields of bread.
French peasants
Always in the evening when the sky streams
Red and tattered like a burning banner, a colossal sign,
When they don’t know is it the red of sunset or villages in flames
They hurry through the dark valleys, crouching down
Creeping from the woods towards their villages and stand
Bent forward on hilltops and look, look
Where the rubbled homeland is going up in fire and smoke.
Without end, the avenues of blackened and stiffening trees
Climbing in flames delineate the familiar highways
To those who cannot comprehend the wasted land.
Empty and drab without end
In the evening light, into the red sky grow
Stony land, ploughland and meadow.
Hour after hour after hour
The peasants stand there in droves and stare
Over the smoking farms, the woods, the sore furrows
Over the lamenting fields and the lonely vigils
Of the rafters of the trees.
Not till the wind wafts towards them the humming of bells
Not till night is shown
By the lights in the pit of the enemy trenches
Only then will the peasants with strangely stricken faces
Bewildered, distraught, creep back down
The valleys and into the woodland hiding places.
Ballad of the dance
In spring when the fair came round she danced
As though the great storm were shaking out her soul into darkness . . .
Big and strong like a red desire she danced
While over dark fields the wind wheeled home in the night oblivious.
But afterwards by some it was being said
He had fallen at the front as the wind blew high
And that dying he stretched himself out and was listening, dead
To the winds of spring and died with a groan and still did not wish to die.
She, however, went mad. And danced at the fairs for money. Danced
Through the land down its roads and was always looking for—
She didn’t know what. And danced . . . Laughed in her torment, danced.
Listened, crazed, to the high wind of spring and searched on the dark roads and never found what she was looking for, I’m sure.
A soldier’s grave
Where the soldiers lie, down there
My friend is lying too.
I couldn’t find him out there.
And what’s it matter now?
He fought and sang in times past
With all of them in a row
He swung his sword with all the rest
And now with all of them he’s lost
And lies with them below.
The evening wind blows where they lie
And sings a song or two.
Makes me sad. I don’t know why.
And what’s it matter now?
Bonnie Mac Sorel courted . . .
Bonnie Mac Sorel courted
The wild young black-haired Lou
But she turned her shining face from him
And her black pigtail too.
Bonnie Mac Sorel, she knew him not
And he waited many a year
Till then in his anger the quiet girl Lee
Was lovelier to him than Lou and the Virgin were.
When Bonnie Mac after many a year
Rode to church with the quiet Lee
Away from the road through the grass proud Lou
Kept them tearful company.
And who it was neither Bonnie Mac
Nor his young bride could say
For she turned away her raddled white face
And her hair was already grey.
Bonnie Mac Sorel, he knew her not
And she waited many a year
And by then in her sorrow Bonnie Mac Sorel
Was lovelier than God and the Devil to her.
The men of the sea
Bright times, hooray, the war has begun!
Don’t you cry. Farewell. It has to be.
We’ll still have your wind out there and your sun
And soon we’ll be back again.
So said the men of the sea.
Leaving port, they sang like a choir, loud and bright
Wives and children wept woefully.
But they spied over the sunlit waves for the enemy fleet:
Because you must be free.
So said the men of the sea.
Of the enemy three sank. But the last one bore
Them down with him in the sea.
But over the dark waves they spied for the sunny shore.
And we’ll never be back again
So said the men of the sea.
They did not weep. They did not pray.
Adieu, wind and sun! Adieu, home country!
They died very quiet in the bright light of midday.
Because you must be free.
So said the men of the sea.
Mothers of the missing
Since death took his body, his name and his grief away
They cease directing their lives
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They cease their planning and thinking, they say
Thanks for the junk that poverty in pity gives
And are amazed like the blind from whom too suddenly
In the midst of and lovingly embraced by the sunshine
So strangely fast the sun went down.
Living is a sin. Loving is sorrow.
Forgetting is sweet. Remembering, lovely.
And if they grow old and would be glad if they died today
Today is too soon, far too soon, and so is tomorrow
For his place must be kept. His place is ready.
And if they grow old: he is young forever
Many years, he still goes dressed as a soldier.
And the years go by. He is not yet dead.
He never will die. It is only that he’ll never come back.
A coffee pot stays full and empty a chair.
And they save him a bed and they save him bread
And they pray for him and when they lack
Always they entreat him to come home here.
They ask and they speak—they scarcely listen.
They look through windows but see nothing there.
Did not see the clouds pass. Did not hear the wind roar.
Were deaf when the rain ran, blind when they looked at the sun.
But eyes that are old in a tired face become
Radiant and young: they are thinking of him.
And if they only believe and do not despair