Plea for an Epitaph
It is a long war. We are without supplies,
There is poison in the meat, the foe is invisible.
At night, crouched trembling in the caves of Our minds,
We hear the crash of breaking terrors over Our heads.
And deep below, a stealthy creeping, the treason of our wills!
We were not bred to this. We sicken at blood,
Our guts knot up and crawl at the' touch of steel.
We gaze at our shambling bodies, stinking of fear.
There was bright sun-woad-smoke sharp in our nostrils-
Hammers ringing-the quick eyes of the girls ....
Blinded by this we fall into the traps of poisoned air.
Will they come? we wonder. They will come, we know!
They will be sons of ours, bred of Our haggard loves,
Eyes clear of hatred, hands steady to kill
And steady to build. Their armor will be strong,
Maps true, brains crafty and quick.
Their sons will say
Where the hammers ring, where the girls sing in the sun:
My father was grim;
his
father was a coward.
~ay this at least for us, when the war is won:
Though our hea'rts were faint, and we knew we were no
fighters,
We went to the field. And in madness fled, wept,
Begged for mercy, turned like cornered rats.
And yet in our way we held the field, refused
Sweet death, until we knew our sons had come.
Death cheered us, wiping the stain of our cowardice
From their steady banners advancing under the sun.
HAROLD A. BONER
Memory at Night
Speak
of the dream remembered in the night,
Seek the return though no path leads man back,
and crazed streets lie behind a mad-house wall
studded with glass like pansies. Moonli~ht cuts
false patterns
of
escape upon the ground
and the dream is forgotten,
the door is locked,
the key is lost.
Through twisted years the tension test was tried
until the wire snapped.
Curled singing sound
was bridge across the time that flowed
between the past and present. Bright and still'
the morning lay on streets my childhood knew,
burst into shining fragments with the scream
of Peace that shook the heavens. Streets were filled
PARTISAN
REVIEW AND ANVIL
and lips knew laughter. Eyes burnt out by tears
were lit again.
But this remains as well:
After the streets were silent, after sound
was a crushed and muddy rattle on the ground
the news came back,
the armistice was false.
EDWARD].
FITZGERALD
The
Scab
-Two Choruses fro1//. a Play
when a millionaire gyps a millionaire
the loser has a long way to fall
down through all the levels of luxury:
kaleidoscope of three-color ads--
before assails him the knowledge that
man is a savage in the forest where
death leaps through the trees, that
the machines in his factory were gadgets merely
to keep death at a greate~ distance, that
now his soft hands must dig his grave-
when a worker gyps a worker, there's
no place to fall:
relegated to the bottom of the shaft
he peers through the darkness at the patch of sky
where the beauti iul ads like clouds float by
and he knows damn well who's at the door:
precise as a western union clock-
his landlord, death
II
now that Zanelli, the sick man, is gone
you two left alone are assailed by doubt like a disease-
somewhere in the far-flung impersonal world
which you took for gral1ted yesterday
a sabotage switch was thrown:
the trains are stalled, the lights are out:
mechanical arm truncated in mid-air:
semaphore like a broken wing
above the twisted rail where now at dawn
across the mangled bodies you two alone
face one another for your life in a dead world-
each of you crying hard for
his precious world, his sure world
where no treacherv lurks
where a woman like wax has so often taken the impression
of how you feel that your loneliness breaks down
and pours singing into her body when she comes close-
where yesterday was rhythm of work
today each of you quickly out of hurt like a snail
pulls in to the shore of his sure investments
and speculates how dangerous the sea
between .him and his friend who suddenly
is become a stranger
HECTOR RELLA
