80
PARTISAN REVIEW
Starts at broad noon as though some peddler whined
At it in its familiar twang: "My friend,
"Cut your own throat! Cut your own throat! Now! Now!"
September twenty-second, Sirs, the bough
Cracks with its russet apples: in the dawn
The small-mouthed bass breaks water, gorged with spawn.
RoBERT LowELL
THE CRICKET
Admire all those men: they were shot in thickets;
Admire all those men: they were crushed in trenches;
Admire all those men: they were drowned in oceans;
Admire them, sang the cricket in the twilight,
They kept their honor and went down to death.
So many are the faces here at twilight;
The names are myriad, myriad are the nameless:
They sleep the general peace of generations.
Learn, said the cricket, how they came to die:
The cruel grew crueller and the mild were dead.
Honor Hector, sang the cricket weeping,
Remember Achilles, recall brave Patroclus,
Think, too, of Hauptman Heilig, Corporal Cobb.
I can't help weeping, wept the little cricket,
Time runs in cycles and the young must die.
Whether at Yorktown, Bull Run, or at Flanders,
Or near an atoll in the vast Pacific,
They kept their honor when they had to go.
Admire them, sang the cricket in the twilight,
Say that they knew their purpose when they died.
J.
v.
HEALY
