The Knells of War

A. E. Housman’s Ghost Mourns the Fall of the Empire

What’s to be done with these scraps of my life, the peels and old papers dropped behind,     the unfossilizable past?

In the pasture small animal bones fill cracks in the ledge, skulls lurk half-hidden like rocks—      (Imagine instead their skins cast

not like snakes’ but in shining bronze or light-catching marble like David’s loins     luring new lovers each day.)

What a vision it was—the April full moon, the free-loving Easter air, the upturn     of the year burling away—

when the rumble of war rolled it flat like a still photo, fear unfurled on the hills,     and the old dog whined to come in.

The clock in the hall counted my long days; midnight chimed its twelve like a knell,     each stroke a farewell to a friend

who died while the world and time were green. The dead write no letters, go half-mourned;     a few were kind to the end.

Still the living hurry along pursued by death, hoping that soon     death, too, will be banned

like disease, replaced by conforming desires and the reannealed rings of small failures,     golden on each hand.

See the beautiful immortals,the once-young gods a-making love     in fields of asphodel.

Watch the dumb, blind, blue earthturn brown and shrink like a savage head     without a story to tell.

“Not us! Not us!” the survivors cry. No life, I see, without eyes. Nada.     Nobody here since we died.

Death of a Poet

In memoriam W. M. M.

His land in its way was kind to him;     he in his turn served it well;     honors overcame him like clouds       brightening as he failed.

First of his kind in war to fly planes     from a carrier, latest hero to die,     he loved men in their ecumenical goodness       in the heat of the flak-filled sky.

    His excellence came as an unannounced guest       and like a shadow passed.

The love of his life died before he was born;     he spent years restoring the names of the dead,     that his poems, too, should be fine and just       and as blue as blood well-bred.

    In one corner of his heart old friends       perambulated on Sundays hand-in-glove,       holding tight to noble ends,         the thrill of faith masked by the risks of love.