It was sleep atop supplies, it was pickhandle, it was coming against the
wall in tears,
sometimes it was factory banter, stoking jerked breechblocks and filing
souvel1lrs,
or miles-wide humming cattleyards of humans, or oiled ship-fires slanting
111 Ice,
rag-wearers burst as by huge War Bonds coins, girls' mouths full of living
nce.
No one came home from it. Phantoms smoked two hundred daily.
Ghosts held civilians at bay,
since war turns beyond strut and adventure to keeping what you've
learned, and shown,
what you've approved, and what you've done, from ever reaching your
own.
This is died for. And nihil and nonsense feed on it day after day.
SUSAN LASHER
The American Philosopher
Fame came easily - the rumor
of a perfect solitude:
one plate, one cup, one crude
utensil like a pen. Notched
time was kept like the token
shipwreck and its slave -
the wrecked, the subtlest
footprint in the sand.
Here, on the pebbled beach
of the quiet mossy pond,
the accidental discovery
of his own small hand-
