432
PARTISAN REVIEW
Hear it falling on the ground,
hear, all around.
That is not a tearful sound,
beating, beating on the ground.
See it lying there like seeds,
like black seed-;.
See it taking root like weeds,
faster, faster than the weeds,
all the shining seeds take root,
conspiring root,
and what curious flower or fruit
will grow from that conspiring root?
Fruit or flower? It is a face.
Yes, a face.
In that dark and dreary place
each seed grows into a face.
Like an army in a dream
the faces seem,
darker, darker, like a dream.
They're too real to be a dream.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
AN OFFICERS' PRISON CAMP SEEN
FROM A TROOP TRAIN
It is some school, brick, green, a sleepy hill,
That blazes from the train's tum
in
its wire.
Nightly the guns are set, the cold guards yawn,
The lights bum for the sleepless prisoner
Who works like a gopher through the dirt of time
To climb this midnight back to his own war.
At first he waited: read, slept, or heard the lies
They told him always- the interminable defeats -
Till he began to see - next year, next year -
