ANZAC day 2015 - Wilfred Owen; Siegfried Sassoon

Into April and almost ANZAC day once more – an Australian remembrance of the blunder at Gallipoli and how the Turks kicked our arses all the way back to Bondi.  Oh alright then, it’s a celebration of historic events that defined us for who we are as a nation and epitomises the ‘Aussie’ spirit of mateship, true grit and cheerful perseverance in the face of struggle and adversity – there!  Of course few of the poor beggars who took part in Gallipoli would have appreciated that.  Normally at ANZAC day I’m looking for a Naval poem to post – the Navy being my background and tradition.  But this year happens to be the 100^th anniversary of when Australian and New Zealand troops were put ashore at Gallipoli, so I thought it might be more fitting to revisit favourite poems that come out of the great war (WW1) – poets like Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Blunden, Rosenberg, Graves …..  Reading these guys makes you appreciate how the art of poetry can capture a moment in time and make it as moving and stark as any artist’s painting or cameraman’s photo – more so I believe, because it is through the arrangement of words forming our civilised tongue that common emotion is stirred within us most strongly.  That’s how I feel about Wilfred Owen’s, Dulce Et Decorum Est.  Wilfred was English and must have been a man of true grit – he enlisted in 1915 (2^nd Lieutenant), treated for shellshock, sent back to the UK, returned to France and the front line in 1918 and was killed in action on the fourth of November (one week before Armistice Day).  Wilfred Owen was strongly influenced and mentored by another great WW1 poet, Siegfried Sassoon.  He and Sassoon met when Wilfred was being treated for shellshock in the UK.  Both these poets tell of how life really was at the front, in the trenches – pull no punches; a strong protest against war which is in contrast to some of the patriotic fervour written at the start of the war by poets such as Rupert Brooke and Edward Thomas.  The title of the poem, Dulce Et Decorum Est forms part of a more complete quote given in the last line – “The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”, (The old Lie: It is sweet and right to die for your country.).  Literal translation of the title?  Sweet and Right/Fitting/Honourable/Glorious it is!

 Dulce Et Decorum Est

(Wilfred Owen – 1893 to 1918)

 

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through

    sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep.  Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood shod.  All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

 

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime …..

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

 

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

 

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes

Writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen has not chosen the title of his poem by accident – way back around 50 BC a Roman poet named Horace coined the phrase in one of his Odes, III.2.13.  The quote was also inscribed on the wall of the chapel of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1913 (wonder if it’s still there?).  I reckon Wilfred must have sat in that chapel as a young, raw officer, reflected on those words; perhaps romantically embraced them at the time and then spat them back bitterly when he had a taste of reality of war on the western front.

Two things in a poem for me – ‘content’ and ‘construction’.  Dulce Et Decorum Est satisfies my need for content – clear that it’s about a company of soldiers making their way out of the front line to a rest area (“towards our distant rest began to trudge”) when they come under a chlorine or mustard gas attack.  Standard procedure is for somebody to yell “Gas! Gas!” (expelling air from their lungs so as not to breathe it in).  This alerts others to put their gas masks on (“…. fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets ….”).  One man is slow to react and is overcome by the gas before getting his mask on (“…. someone  …flound’ring like a man in fire or lime …”).  The effect of the gas is horrific (“… guttering, choking, drowning.  The blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs …”).  Another reference to gas masks is in the second stanza (“ ..through the misty panes and thick green light,”).  This is the poet looking through the green tinted glass that was fitted to WW1 style gas masks.  “Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines …” tells us that the soldiers have moved beyond the range (“outstripped”) of the enemy artillery firing 5.9 calibre shells.

I have to admire the construction of this poem also.  Look at the rhyme structure – it supports the presentation of two sonnets – the first one speaks of action in the present tense (the poet is there as things are happening).  The second sonnet puts the poet at a distance from the horror.  He’s having nightmares about what he’s experienced and they are full of sights and sounds of the human body in tortured death.  Oh there is no glory (“… tell with such high zest …”).

Now my link to Wilfred Owen and Australian soldiers in WW1 was formed last year when I was fortunate to visit Ypres in Belgium.  Many Australian soldiers fought and died defending that town in the five battles of Ypres (some 36000 killed or wounded).  Plus many more UK and Commonwealth troops marched out of Ypres on their way to the front crossing an ancient bridge and moat at a place called Menin Gate.  After the war, a memorial was erected there to commemorate the names of over 54000 men who died and have no known graves (bodies not identified or found).  The names of the soldiers are carved on the stone walls.  Menin Gate is now a very popular tourist attraction.  Something I found out while researching for this post (which tells me now that it’s good to do your study before going on holiday), prior to WW1 there were two stone lions guarding the Menin Gate (not there now).  They were removed to prevent them being damaged during the war, and then after the war they were donated to Australia and now sit at the entrance to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra – how about that; visited there many times but I’ve never noticed them lions.  Also, if you are going to visit Menin Gate (being a poetry lover), research beforehand the origin of Latin quotes carved on the external walls of the memorial.

Having walked down the road to Menin Gate to witness a ceremony of the last post, I wanted to write my observations, my thoughts, feelings – I thought the emotion would be ‘moving’, ‘reverent’ – and I’m sure it could have been except for the millions of other people who seemed to be jostling desperately to be a survivor.  And then I thought, I guess this is akin to the WW1 western front experience – go with it!  So I wrote, At Menin Gate 2014.  The first line of Wilfred Owen’s poem gave me my first line, “Stretched craning like goons at an accident site.”

 

The opening ceremony for the Menin Gate memorial was held in 1927.  At that time the English poet, Siegfried Sassoon wrote a poem titled, On Passing the New Menin Gate.  I include it here as an extra because it is such an emotional, strong protest on how he, a soldier who experienced the war feels betrayal and insult by those who sent young men to wasteful slaughter, and then try to honour it through a pile of stones built in an arch (“ ..ever an immolation (sacrifice) so belied (failed to act up to)”).

 

 

 

  On Passing the New Menin Gate

(Siegfried Sassoon – 1886 to 1967)

 

Who will remember, passing through this Gate,

The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?

Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate, -

Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?

Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own.

Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp;

Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,

The armies who endured that sullen swamp.

 

Here was the world’s worst wound.  And here with pride

‘Their name liveth for ever,’ the Gateway claims.

Was ever an immolation so belied

As these intolerably nameless names?

Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime

Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.

2014.  September – we meet up with our UK friends and do a motoring tour of Europe.  First stop is Ypres (Leper).  I’m done over by what I can only describe as the ‘touristification’ of significant sites, the bus loads of camera snappy visitors.

 

At Menin Gate 2014

 

Stretched craning like goons at an accident site.

Bodies pressed tip toe skittish as meerkats,

we cuss arriving late for taps at the Menin Gate.

Now a mob has amassed in ignorance already,

amidst this lurking, baffling smell of horseshit,

but for the horse, there appears to be not one.

Two Romanians roll loose tobacco and stare at women.

School girls on foreign excursion flirt in frayed shorts,

run away and giggle from youths

become weary with walls

which they know are meant to be sad,

but really man, what can ya do?

And the Japanese girls comprehend nothing at all.

Then a trumpet rustles it to silence and look.

And from the silence as many lit iPhone screens

on sticks,

rise irreverent to capture something on facebook –

You went to Ypres, what was it like?

And casting around at the common eyed curiosity,

a sense of dull pity dawns, this

the surviving DNA?

While the best of mankind’s seed went to waste?

Spilled in the fields of Flanders,

And all up over the walls of the Menin Gate?

                                                                                                                 J. O. White

 

 

Shakespeare - now entertain conjecture of a time

Like most everybody else, I’m caught up in the birth of the royal baby, Prince George – a time for reflection on a myriad of things, what with our elections coming up and the push that will come from parties to become republic or stay with the monarchy.  My wife looks at the news clips, and pines, “what a shame Diana couldn’t be there, they loved their mum,” as she transfers the love and value of her own family.  While I find my thoughts dwell on privilege, duty, ancient tradition, royalty and other lives played out in English monarchs, some of whom were proper bastards.  But then a couple of days ago I’m watching a BBC documentary on Prince Harry, about his role in the army throughout Iraq and in Afghanistan.  I was quite taken by this picture of a modern Royal, an ordinary young man, but a man in a position of influence and he comes across as being a decent sort of bloke.  I admired his obvious liking and acceptance among the troops and his relaxed leadership qualities.  And that then took me to Henry the Fifth, the only play I’m familiar with from William Shakespeare.  Henry V was one of my studies at school, but I know nothing from that.  It’s only now that I understand, wanting to understand, and I discover a language that is so polished and beautiful.  When I read my favourite acts of Shakespeare I feel we are losing our ability to express the elegant English language – well, among the people I know, anyway!  For this post I have to tell you how much I love reciting, ‘Now entertain conjecture of a time’, from the play Henry V.  The act imagines the scene in the camp of the English army on the night before battle with the French at Agincourt in 1415.  King ‘Harry’ reminds me of how I think our modern young ‘Harry’ would be.

Now entertain conjecture of a time

(William Shakespeare 1564 - 1616)

Now entertain conjecture of a time

When creeping murmur and the poring dark

Fills the wide vessel of the universe.

From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night,

The hum of either army stilly sounds,

That the fix’d sentinels almost receive

The secret whispers of each other’s watch:

Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames

Each battle sees the other’s umber’d face:

Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs

Piercing the night’s dull ear; and from the tents

The armourers, accomplishing the knights,

With busy hammers, closing rivets up,

Give dreadful note of preparation.

The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll,

And the third hour of drowsy morning name,

Proud of their numbers, and secure in soul,

The confident and over-lusty French

Do the low-rated English play at dice;

And chide the cripple tardy-gaited night

Who, like a foul and ugly witch, doth limp

So tediously away.  The poor condemned English,

Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires

Sit patiently, and inly ruminate

The morning’s danger, and their gesture sad

Investing lank-lean cheeks and war-worn coats

Presenteth them unto the gazing moon

So many horrid ghosts.  O! now, who will behold

The royal captain of this ruin’d band

Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent,

Let him cry ‘Praise and glory on his head!’

For forth he goes and visits all his host,

Bids them good morrow with a modest smile,

And calls them brothers, friends, and countrymen.

Upon his royal face there is no note

How dread an army hath enrounded him;

Nor doth he dedicate one jot of colour

Unto the weary and all-watched night;

But freshly looks and overbears attaint

With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty;

That every wretch, pining and pale before,

Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks.

A largess universal, like the sun

His liberal eye doth give to every one,

Thawing cold fear.  Then mean and gentle all

Behold, as may unworthiness define,

A little touch of Harry in the night.

 

And so our scene must to the battle fly;

Where, - O for pity, - we shall much disgrace,

With four or five most vile and ragged foils,

Right ill dispos’d in brawl ridiculous,

The name of Agincourt.

 

I defy anybody, having read Now entertain conjecture of a time, who then denies any feeling of being taken to the very midst of those English soldiers on the night before their struggle in the battle of Agincourt.  For me, the expression in the poem reflects a gentleness that captures King Henry’s true character and also matches the mood found in the depth of night and early morn.
 I’ve trolled back through some of my early work to find something that touches on the feeling of ‘Harry’ walking among his troops.  The closest I come is, Battlegroup.  It’s a feeling more than a poem that I wrote in a quiet, early morning moment.  The pulse is the gentleness before the sheer destruction of battle.
1987.  On HMAS Canberra exercising with a US Navy battle group.  We are coming into position to commence a refuelling run on a tanker - USS Passumpsic. It's pre dawn.  The sky is still dark.  Other ships are stationed all about us.  We move up into position and start refueling.  The feeling is one of powerful technology.  There is comfort and protection from the dark and the cool of the morning in the purposeful progress of these huge pieces of steel gliding easily on the sea.

 

Battlegroup

Early morning light,

out in the Pacific,

steaming south -

south east into a pink cloudy sky,

a light swell rolls us,

alongside ‘Passumpsic”,

embellicled by black,

looped fuelling hoses,

diesels loud in a racing thump

from her high funnel,

orange floods wash a warm glow

over enclosed tank decks,

contrasted with,

striking blue police lamps

picking out station markers,

away astern where ‘Midway’ surrounds herself

with other ships,

a block of dark angles and mastheads,

jewelled with red warning beacons,

blink, blink of aircraft lights,

as helicopters lift from the mass and glide along the sea,

going about the business of war.

                                                        J. O. White

  

John Masefield - Fever Chills

“I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky” ………. Oh yeah, I may mess around with poems about princes and alternate psychology, failed love and pets I’ve had, but after I’m done with all that, and I’m bored from being ashore and I’m bored with lubber prose then I’ve got to breathe salt air and taste the salty sea once more.  That’s when I turn to men like John Masefield.  And what better poem than Masefield’s Fever Chills to put me arm in arm again with characters doing their time at sea.  This is one of my favourite Masefield poems, the poor bastard at the bottom of the pecking order in a voice, a language and a behaviour that is absolutely historical in it’s preservation of how sailors once thought and talked ………. and hopefully, probably, still do.  I believe the 'Chief' in Fever Chills was still in when I was doing my time on Vendetta.

                                                          Fever-Chills

                                                                           (John Masfield 1878 - 1967)

 

He tottered from the alleyway with cheeks the colour

        of paste,

And shivered a spell and mopped his brow with a clout

        of cotton waste:

“I’ve got a lick of the fever-chills,” he said, “ ‘n’ my inside it’s

        green,

But I’d be as right as rain,” he said, “if I had some

        quinine, --

But there ain’t no quinine for us poor sailor-men.

 

“But them there passengers,” he said, “if they gets

        fever-chills,

There’s brimmin’ buckets o’ quinine for them, ‘n’ bulgin’

        crates o’ pills,

‘N’ a doctor with Latin ‘n’ drugs ‘n’ all – enough to sink

        a town,

‘N’ they lies quiet in their blushin’ bunks ‘n’ mops their

        gruel down, --

But there ain’t none ‘o them fine ways for us poor

        sailor-men.

 

But the Chief comes forrard ‘n’ he says, says he, ‘I

        gives you a straight tip:

Come none o’ your Cape Horn fever lays aboard o’ this

        yer ship.

On wi’ your rags o’ duds, my son, ‘n’ aft, ‘n’ down the

        hole:

The best cure known for fever-chills is shovelling bloody

        coal.’

It’s hard, my son, that’s what it is, for us poor sailor-

        men

In this post I’m including two short pieces from a eulogy I wrote in honour of my grandmother’s youngest brother (Jimmy Oliver) who died as a prisoner of war in Sandakan, Borneo in 1945.  Jimmy was with the Australian 8^th Division, 2/10^th Field Regiment, sent to Malaya in 1941 to safeguard Singapore should the Japanese attack.  We all know how that turned out.  Anyway, I like to think Jimmy and his mates maintained their Aussie, larrikin and military sense of humour throughout the ordeal.  That’s how I wanted to write it.  I was lucky to be able to do some research at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra one time when I was posted to Navy Office.  I was allowed access to the hand written diaries the Regiment maintained daily from it’s inception in Brisbane, embarkation, soldiering in Malaya and the retreat and final surrender in Singapore.  It was the little snippets that I was interested in – the daily routine; who went on leave with whom; who got punished   Unashamedly, I borrow the rhythm of Masefield’s Fever Chills to try and portray the voice of those poor bastards who embarked on an adventure and got trapped on Singapore.

 

“Tranquil you lie,

      Your knightly virtue proved,

           Your memory hallowed,

                 In the land you loved.”

……..Memorial to 2/10 Field Regiment, Brisbane

1941, Thursday, 20th February         A greaser from the troop ship Queen Mary was found drowned in Singapore harbour.  He had been drinking.

 

E staggered from the Horse Guard Bar

with two of his new found mates,

spat in the gutter and crudely yelled, up the AIF

I gotta get back to the Queen e says,

for Mary’s me home and bed,

so they turned him to port and held up his head

til his eyes stopped lolling about,

then they let him loose and he teetered and rolled

the way that a sailor would,

you’re a greaser they yelled, a greaser from hell,

you’re a bad and evil man,

and the greaser rolled into the night as happy as he could be

 

in the morning they fished a body out

from the harbour of Singapore,

it were Charlie Smith the greaser were he,

and e drank in the Horse Guard Bar.

 

1942, 2nd to 8th February.                   The Japanese subjected the 22^nd Brigade area to an intense artillery barrage.

 

We cowers and our morale is low,

but we’d be alright

if supply could get us more ammo,

them Japs, they

got plenty of ammo, too right,

and they hides and hurls their projies on us

all day and at night,

but there ain’t ammunition enough

for Aussie artillery use.

 

Sarge from ‘is briefing says,

ration the ammo some more,

twelve rounds a day each gun,

to fire at the Japs in Johore,

it’s tough, I know,

but if you’d pull your heads from your backsides,

you’d be better gunners, and find,

it ain’t ammo on what you’s rely,

but there ain’t ammunition enough

for Aussie artillery use.

                              J. O. White

 



 

Bruce Dawe - 'homecoming'.

I place Bruce Dawe up there at the top in my list of contemporary Australian poets who I admire.  Like others on the list (e.g. Robert Gray and Les Murray), Dawe comes from a rural, farming background (born 1930).  Each of these poets writes great descriptive verse of the landscape and country life.  How is that?  A childhood spent in idle paddocks, self reflective, talking the ears off corn and cows, maybe?  I’m not much of a descriptive writer myself so stand to learn a lot from reading their work.  Bruce Dawe spent a couple of years in the Royal Australian Air Force (1959 - 1968) and some of his poems reflect his knowledge of the military.  When I look back to how old I was before I heard of Bruce Dawe, I reckon I lived a deprived childhood.  It was a girl I once knew in Melbourne who introduced me to his poetry.  She had studied him at school.  My education was in the Queensland public system.  While we were doing Shakespeare, Dorothea MacKellar and Henry Kendell, it appears down in the Victorian Catholic school system they were being fed modern thought from guys like Bruce Dawe.  I couldn’t believe it.  I can now.  Bruce became a Catholic convert in 1954 (24 years old).  He and I have parallels; the girl was Catholic, but the choice was mine; life leads you.  Back to Bruce – in his early poems I can see why Catholic education included him in their curriculum early in his popularity and before the public system.  At first reading, Bruce’s poetry may appear irreverent if a person’s perception is of a prim and proper devout church goer (especially in the 1950’s, 1960’s).  But on further reading, one finds Bruce Dawe actually renders the subject of working class social life to reflect it exactly as it is.  And in it’s honesty it can’t be anything else but acceptable.  The Catholic laity read the words from their ‘boy’ and say, “ain’t that the truth”.  He deals with life in a way that enfolds it in wry humour, Irish Catholic humour, acceptable social truth for the modern Catholic.  With such a build up I should be giving you ‘Wood-eye’, or ‘Life Cycle’ or ‘At Shagger’s Funeral’, but I’m not (another post).  For now I want to include what is perhaps Bruce Dawe’s most famous and influential poem – ‘Homecoming’.  This was written in 1968 and is seen as an anti-war poem opposed to the war in Vietnam.  It has such a tragic tone to it, a machine, production line beat.  Something I hook up with in the poem’s construction is the lack of full stops, no ending of one sentence, stop, starting another one (enjambment).  The lines proceed in one read from 1 to 26.  No rhyme or standard metre but still flowing and easy to read (and recite).

homecoming

(Bruce Dawe, 1930 -)

 

All day, day after day, they’re bringing them home,

they’re picking them up, those they can find, and bringing them home,

they’re bringing them in piled on the hulls of Grants, in trucks, in convoys,

they’re zipping them up in green plastic bags,

they’re tagging them now in Saigon, in the mortuary coolness

they’re giving them names, they’re rolling them out of

the deep-freeze lockers – on the tarmac at Tan Son Nhut

the noble jets are whining like hounds,

they are bringing them home

- curly heads, kinky-hairs, crew-cuts, balding non-coms

- they’re high, now, high and higher, over the land, the steaming chow mein,

their shadows are tracing the blue curve of the Pacific

with sorrowful quick fingers, heading south, heading east,

home, home, home – and the coasts swing upward, the old ridiculous

                                                                                                                curvatures

of earth, the knuckled hills, the mangrove-swamps, the desert emptiness …

in their sterile housing they tilt towards these like skiers

- taxiing in, on the long runways, the howl of their homecoming rises

surrounding them like their last moments (the mash, the splendour)

then falling at length as they move

on to small towns where dogs in the frozen sunset

raise muzzles in mute salute,

and to the cities in whose wide web of suburbs

telegrams tremble like leaves from a wintering tree

and the spider grief swings in his bitter geometry

-        they’re bringing them home, now, too late, too early.

 

War and the prospect of war is a trembling thing the closer you get to the action.  I don’t know if Bruce Dawe ever intended ‘homecoming’ to be an anti-war poem.  I tend to think that he didn’t.  I think the poem was written at such a time and it resounded with such heavy grief and dulled remorse that those who were keen to find anything anti-war wanted it to be an anti-war poem.  Also, I’ve read some reviews that think the poem refers to Australian dead being brought back home.  I would say no, it’s referring solely to the many American casualties.  Australia just never had the numbers to be ‘bringing them home, day after day’; it’s more likely that Australian transport would have been by RAAF Hercules, a prop driven aircraft, not ‘jets whining like hounds’; I believe Australian casualty evacuation would have been from Vung Tau, not ‘deep freeze lockers in Saigon’; and to me, ‘curly heads, kinky-hairs, crew-cuts, balding non-coms’ epitomises an Australian view of the American serviceman – kinky-hair negro representation, severe marine crew-cut, balding older career soldiers with stripes.

 

My poem for this post is ‘Duty’, somewhat influenced by ‘homecoming’ (I include a dog and I try to project the senselessness of it all).  Now I don’t believe my poem is an anti-war poem.  It’s more an ‘anti-apathy about anything to do with war’ poem.  Our men and women in uniform have little choice when a decision is made to go to war.  Most of them and their families don’t like it either, but they perform their duty in the way they’ve been trained.  So it ticked me off when some people in the public responded to sailors expressing concern about going to the first Gulf war with things like, “It’s part of their job; they knew what to expect when they joined; they chose to do that; it’s a condition of service ……….”

 

1990.  Cardiff, New South Wales.  ANZAC day and we walked down to the local RSL club where they were holding a night remembrance service.  There were dozens of small, white crosses planted in the lawn.  Iraq had invaded Kuwait.  Ships were going over to join forces.  There was some open grumbling from the forces about employment conditions, war and potential sacrifice.  The general public gave no sympathy.

 

Duty

A black dog slopes along,

head hung low, pauses

to sniff and piss on the wall

of the Cardiff RSL,

an act of bored indifference

to his master’s strange struggle,

still

sending other son’s names

to be carved in gold

on a small town cenotaph.

 

The dog moves on to debate the moon

which he doesn’t see,

a silver nail pressed into the night

against the wind,

blowing through coloured plastic ribbons

in a deserted used car parking lot,

but the flags flap urgently,

as if they had been corners of patriotic fervour

waving from tall city windows,

sending other son’s names

to be carried as heroes

through the streets

in a small town vets parade.

 

The men are huddled in the port hangar now,

she’s listing heavily that way

and there’s nobody and nothing to right it

since the chief tiff took two and disappeared

into the smoke,

they haven’t come back

and somewhere in the night

the black dog barks,

other son’s names

who should’ve known,

 

 ………it was a condition of service.

                                                                                                                              JO White