Poems, 1957–1967

HORSES AND PRISONERS

HORSES AND PRISONERS In the war where many men fell Wind blew in a ring, and was grass. Many horses fell also to rifles On a track in the Philippine Islands And divided their still, wiry meat To be eaten by prisoners. I sat at the finish line At the end of the war Knowing that I would live. Long grass went around me, half wind, Where I rode the rail of the infield And the dead horses travelled in waves On past the finishing post. Dead wind lay down in live grass, The flowers, pounding like hooves, Stood up in the sun and were still, And my mind, like a fence on fire, Went around those unknown men: Those who tore from the red, light bones The intensifiedmeat of hunger And then lay down open-eyed In a raw, straining dream of new life. Joy entered the truth and flowed over As the wind rose out of the grass Leaping with red and whiteflowers: Joy in the bone-strewn infield Where clouds of barbed wire contained Men who ran in a vision of greenness, Sustained by the death of beasts, On the tips of the sensitive grass blades, Each footstep putting forth petals, Their bones light and strong as the wind. Helmets 171 From the fence I dropped off and waded Knee-deep in the billowing homestretch And picked up the red of one flower. It beat in my hand like my heart, Filled with the pulse of the air, And I felt my long thighbones yearn To leap with the trained, racing dead. When beasts are fallen in wars For food, men seeking a reason to live Stand mired in the on-going grass And sway there, sweating and thinking, With fire coming out of their brains Like the thought of food and life Of prisoners. When death moves close In the night, I think I can kill it: Let a man let his mind burn and change him To one who was prisoner here As he sings in his sleep in his home, His mane streaming over the pillows, The white threads of time Mixed with the hair of his temples, His grave-grass risen without him: Now, in the green of that sleep, Let him start the air of the island From the tangled gate of jute string That hangs from the battered grandstand Where hope comes from animal blood And the hooves of ghosts become flowers That a captive may run as in Heaven: Let him strip the dead shirt from his chest And, sighing like all saved men, Take his nude child in his arms. 172 ...