POEMS
Weldon Kees·
JUNE. 1940
"Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense
consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet
can do today is warn."
·
"The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori."
-WILFRED OWEN.
It is summer, and treachery blurs with the sounds of midnight,
The lights blink off at the closing of a door,
And
I
am alone in a worn-out town in wartime,
Thinking of those who were trapped by hysteria once before.
Flaubert and Henry James and Owen,
Bourne with his crooked back, Rilke and Lawrence, Joyce-–
Gun-shy, annoyers, sick of the kill, the watchers,
Suffered the same attack till it broke them or left its scars.
Now the heroes of March are the sorriest fools of April:
The beaters of drums, the flag-kissing men, whose eyes
Once saw the murder, are washing it clean, accusing:
"You are the cowards! All that we told you before was lies!"
It is summer again, the evening is warm and
silent~
The windows are dark and the mountains are miles away.
357
And the men who were haters of war are mounting the platforms.
An idiot wind is blowing; the conscience dies.
Richard Eberhart
"Mysticism
has
not the patience
to
wait for God's revelation.''
-KIERKEGAARD.
But to reach the archimedean point
Was all my steadfastness;
The disjointed times to teach
