Obituary

When the doctor diagnosed the cancer spread,Robert T. Birks, late of Connecticut, co-pilotIn the Eighth Air Force, veteran of twenty-oneMissions over Germany, absolved (partly)By that southern poet he would not have read,Pronounced most unpoetically, I am done for.This, the last he spoke, his last twenty-oneEarthbound days except for the occasional orderBarked at his hovering wife.

She might be consoled by this—that heMeant no harm—that in that cockpit of morphine,He had already flown: the word gone out, land,A green memory, the black cloak of the channelCrossed, and crossed again, the payloadDropped, the B-17 intact returning; the ball turretGunner, curled, asleep, safe this once, the pilot, too,The plane, a cradle, rocked by currents, the steadyEngine’s lullaby.

Awake, alert to the mystery, the luck of aPerfect flight near completion—a new moon,And clouds sufficient for his purpose—he banksWings, a sheer of joy to the starless sky beforeDescending. The cover, a veil lifted, the runwayLit by one dim light—that pretty English nurseAt the foot of it waving her maddeningSemaphore—his only witness, she swearsHe tried to land, but didn’t.