Urban Renewal

New Year's Day 1968: A Quiet but Invincible Optimism

2008-09-01T18:00:00.000-07:00

1 January 1968

I suppose I am risking snow blindness in looking out our glass doors onto the snow covered hill behind our house, but I am in a mood which I like to think of as a reverie, and so I stare out. What I see is not much besides the blinding whiteness: the deep blue of a noontime sky; shadowy geometries cast on the snow by the children's "swing set"; the observation platform, ladder, and fringed canopy that are a part of the swing set itself. A static scene, except for the movement of two thin icicles swinging from the canopy, reminding me of the tinsel "rain" on the Christmas tree. A moment ago, a dried oak leaf glided erratically over the snow crest looking like a frail piece of abstract sculpture foraging for a meaning, then it passed beyond sight.

Except for the cold and wind, I should enjoy planting the Christmas tree today. The sun and sky seem to have touched me with a quiet but invincible optimism: despite having been uprooted a week before Christmas and kept until a week after Christmas in a warm house, somehow it will survive the shock of having been replanted (in a new location) this 15-degree day. And I know that, despite the cold, I will get the tree planted today. This is what I mean by invincible optimism. In other years I should have left the tree in the garage for a day or so -- letting the tree get accustomed to the cold, I would tell the world -- before planting it. Today I don't feel the need for any such evasion: I shall go out there within the hour, not joyfully, perhaps, but but at least without hesitation. A third tree shall commemorate a "live tree" Christmas at this house. Some day, I suppose, our custom must come to a stop; we shall run out of space. But today is a day to dwell only on infinite possibilities.

The snow on the back hill is as new and unmarked as the year. It is a part of this optimism I feel that the year, like the hill, will be marked most conspicuously by footsteps taken in pursuit of the pleasures of human society. Half a day old, at the moment, the year is like a blank slate -- or rather, like an untracked hillside. Each will eventually be erased -- the one by time, the other by time's vicar the sun, and each will have been touched and marked by signs of quest, play, duty, or futility. But surely those ventures of compassionate and hungry human associations will leave marks upon the snows of the year that even the most intensive cross-trackings can never quite efface. Events of the past year have shown this to be a sound expectation.

Faith, Hope, and Charity

2008-09-01T14:03:00.002-07:00

Her name was Hope. Fortunately, no one at that time saw the irony of her name. No one, that is, except her mother. The elder woman had a saying she used often: "Where there's strife, there's Hope -- right in the middle of it!" She'd begin with a despairing here-we-go-again note, but end with a motherly smile so that everybody got the joke. Her daughter, after all, was twenty-four, and it was too late now to do much about her proneness for catastrophic involvement. (Once again, Hope had become entangled in someone else's personal problems. This time it was Halcyon Somerset, a somewhat fluttery friend of twenty-two, whose stormy engagement to Buster Bragdon was nearing the breaking point.) In fact, it was likely to be atomized at any moment. The Gaines family was sweating out another of Hope's vicarious crises.

If Hope had a talent -- a theory no one seemed eager to defend -- it was her apparent knack of innocently precipitating a disaster while in the act of averting another, or of simply making a fouled-up situation worse by maladroitly rendering the assistance she was asked for. On occasions of relatively minor cheerlessness, Hope might be simply the bearer of dire report -- someone's house burglarized, auto stolen, or pet animal killed. But when trouble's gravitational pull was stronger, and if the fates were working in diabolical connivance with misfortune, Hope might find herself directly caught up in the event as a sort of secondary victim. How soon, and to what extent, Halcyon Somerset's troubles would become Hope Gaines's troubles, no one could at the moment predict.

Something Twenty-One Mamaroneck Avenue

2007-05-01T23:18:00.000-07:00

The house I was "born in" was on Mamaroneck Avenue. I don't recall precisely its number; I seem to remember hearing it as something ending in "twenty-one". Perhaps it was 421. There is no easy way to tell now: the house itself is gone and snapshots of it don't show the number.

And whether I was really born in it or in a hospital, I don't know either. At some point in her life, my mother became a Christian Scientist. Was that before or after I was born? I don't know. Did becoming a Christian Scientist lead her to take a stand against going to hospitals at all, even for having a baby? I don't know. I do know that when I was in elementary school, I was amazed at how many of my classmates - by their own accounts - had been born in either Stamford Hospital or Greenwich Hospital. What a lot of kids must have had something wrong with them to be born! I was sure then that it had not happened to me, for if it had, I would have heard about it. (I'm not so sure now. My mother was extraordinarily reticent about such matters.) I used to hear my mother speak of Dr. Marsland (the family doctor) and Miss Edmunton (the public health nurse); but whether I was OB'd in a hosptal or midwived at home I have no idea.

I was five years old when we moved away from Mamaroneck and came to Connecticut, leaving New York State for good. I remember nothing of the preparations for leaving or of why we were going to connecticut. I do remember my brother Tom's talking about the new high school he would be attending, and we joked about its name - Greenwich. He must have been told it was pronounced "Grin-itch", for I laughed when he first said the name, and I said (and kept repeating for our amusement) the word it immediately suggested: "spinach". In later years, after I had acquired a wider vocabulary through reading and listening, I realized how funny the name of Tom's former high school [was], suggesting as it did a dislocation of the cervical vertebrae. Mamaroneck did not have its own high school then, and the Mamaroneck students attended one in the neighboring town of Rye - more specifically, in the section known as Rye Neck. I have wondered whether anyone saw the humor in the name Rye (wry) Neck High School after a season of dislocating football injuries.

The Keeper

2005-04-10T18:01:00.000-07:00

He blends, at first, with the corrupted landscape;
and then you see him: a gross blue figure
panoplied in overalls and contempt, moving,
perhaps, a step or two to survey
impassively, wiht porcine eyes,
each citizen come to cast
non-goods on more non-goods in this
anti-matter kingdom.

From ranched,
split-leveled, and garrisoned lives
they turn this Sunday morning, briefly,
as every Sunday morning, to leave
their leavings. Each car or truck in turn
receives his house-detective scrutiny,
for he sees that the simple protocol
is followed: drive up, dump, drive off.
Hands thrust importantly in pockets,
he nods them through the course -- salesman,
buider, teacher, clerk, who for a brief
half-hour play at being
the necessary pariah.

He
does not play. The dump is his,
and all that therein is.

One,
uninitiated -- or rash, found a chair he no doubt thought
could be upholstered back to life.
He got it halfway to his station-
wagon, then, crimson-faced, returned it
to its resting place after
the thou-shalt-not's had thundered.

Our follies, set down in black and white,
that we so fatuously consign
to the waste paper basket first,
and then the garbage barrel,
were better burned, or flushed down toilets.
For at the dump our scribblings
don't die at first; they lie nakedly
or get blown about. And who is strong
not to yield to their temptations?
The man in blue overalls sees that only
the man in blue overalls sees.

There's
power in the world to him who wants it.

Qualifications Examined

2005-04-10T17:55:00.000-07:00

The job that I must do some day --
Fill an excavation or fule a flame --
I hope will not be asked of me too soon.
Were it tonight, or, say, tomorrow noon,
The fire would sputter, to my shame,
Or else the hole that's dug would be
So unexpectedly full of space
They'd think they'd buried in that place
Someone already more than half a ghost.

It's not the job that I mind most.
What daunts me is the sense that I
Won't have enough of me to make it worth
The trouble everyone will go to
To get me properly combusted up the flue
Or bedded tidily in the earth.
What's worse, it's certain that they'll know
How ill I fit the job, and so infer
A life spent on the perimeter
Of Life, where growth takes longer. I'm not the right size yet. I need more time.

Until that job opening comes through,
It's living I must do and do.

A Solstice Incantation

2004-12-21T17:26:00.000-08:00

The sun has hurled itself far far away;
it will not draw near us soon.

They say the universe is expanding.
Is this then what we are to look out on,
feel sucking at the heat left on our skins
till we are caught up in the dispersal,
struggle against lest hearts be ripped
from us by that receding magnet?

Then I renounce that universe
that zero raised to the power of infinity.
And I would make of my heart a lodestone
not to annul the sun's flight
nor to be sooner torn asunder
but to pull, and feel the pul from, other hearts.

Outward and outward the sun goes.
At night, on a clear clear night
the very singleness of each star
makes the star seem more remote
and I can believe those who say
the universe is expanding.
And a chill steals into me as I wonder:
Will those stars disappear one by one
over the horizon of the galaxy
as if the earth and all its fellow planets
were things to be avoided, things to be left alone?

Alone I stand at the edge of a wood
on the side of a hill on a cold bright day.
I look up at the gray skeletons overhead
and see, here and there, a brown leaf
moving convulsively and hear it cry
in the wind. The wind is cold.
I say a prayer for the leaf;
for where would I go if the wind
dislodged me? Would I become part
of the great dispersal
adrift in an ever-enlarging sea of space?
The far sun shines
but it is a far far sun, a withholding sun.

Is it because of the cold
that I can not feel?
The ground is somewhere beneath my feet.
The snow on the ground is beneath my feet
somewhere. And out there at my finger's tip
is a tree, is a rock, is air, somewhere.
And somewhere
just a little outside my heart
and my bones and my flesh is my skin
somewhere.
And somewhere out there
beyond the tree and the rock and the air
at my finger's tip
is a finger tip I can't quite touch
but it's there.
Is the distance too far
for the message to leap from tip to tip,
the message that travels along the skin
through the bones and the flesh
from the heart to a heart out there
somewhere?

I should make of my heart a lodestone then,
let the flying sun go
(it will be back some day)
and pull my universe together.

I will say this to the somewhere: Let us now
as the sun rides on
down the hill of night
touch one another.
Let our tears flow in one stream,
our songs blend.
Let us speak frank words,
exchange naked hearts,
converse in our close universe,
and looking into one another's faces
smile and say It's you, It's me
after the most ancient and honorable
human way
before there was a Them or a They.
Let us seek as our ancestors sought
some honorable cave wherein to wait
(as if there were still some waiting cave)
the long long winter out
as if we were all the life there is
and all the love.

Uncontested Passage

2004-12-16T13:24:00.000-08:00

The row of houses sitting face to face
Watch to see which house is first to move.
Between the rows extends a whitened space
Wherein of sidewalks there's but token trace
And all there is of street is a feathered groove.

But I am certain that the homes will stay in line;
They look cemented in by the solid snow --
By nature's deed first, now by man's design.
Not soon will shovel-zealots undermine
Snug indolence: there is no place to go.

For snow has stopped the town's activity.
So in the street I boldly walk along,
A peer of moter cars, and feel in me
The kind of joy in rebel liberty
We feel in venturing where we don't belong.

Instructions for Using the Survival Equipment

2004-12-13T09:19:00.000-08:00

It's done like this:
you zip yourself inside
a kind of bag at first,
to separate you from
the shouts and doubts,
keeping the zipper tab
inside, at easy reach. You
wait for quiet, let it grow
and penetrate your cells.
Then, when all you hear
is the second-by-second
second-to-second calm pulse
of affirmation, saying
All right - I'm ready,
slowly, carefully unzip
the bag, emerge, stand like
a rock, yet warm inside,
complete, invulnerable. You
have taken your first step.
Next, you find another,
teach him the bag trick,
stand by him when he emerges.
That's four steps taken.
Watch him as he teaches some-
one else the bag trick
and stands by. (See? How many
steps already!) Keep
watching, standing by.
Always. Give aid, love, strength.
Remember what you're building.
Just concentrate on that.
Never mind how many millions
are in your town or world.
Nobody ever said that
walking up the Andes or Himalayas
would be easy. Neither is living
or staying alive these atom days.
This is how it's done.

Tales My Mother Told Me

2004-12-04T20:08:00.000-08:00

Savannah-born and Georgia-educated (Wesleyan Female Seminary, Macon), my mother came north to complete her musical education. Some of her musical instruction -- both piano and voice, I think -- was under a Miss Coburn, who was related to the actor Charles Coburn. The Coburns and the Cavanaughs (my mother's family) were good friends, and my mother always referred to Charles as Charlie. (She also had a way of slighting the r in his family's name, so that what I always heard were references to "Miss Cobin" and "Charlie Cobin.") Although he was always "Charlie", she was always "Miss Cobin," so I think she must have been his aunt rather than an elder sister. That he did have a sister I am sure because both of them were in the theater and even appeared on the stage together. As I said, the Coburn and Cavanaugh families were friends, and more than once Mother told me of the time Charlie saved her from drowning when she was caught in an undertow off Tybee Island.

For years, so far as I knew, Charles Coburn -- if he was still living -- was retired and still living in Savannah. But one day (I was probably in high school by then), I was reading aloud some movie advertisements in the newspaper to help my parents and me decide which movie to see. Among the cast listed for one movie was Charles Coburn, which I pronounced carefully "Charles Co-burn", not having the faintest idea who he was. "Oh! Charlie Cobin!" my mother exclaimed, surprised and delighted that her former "beau" was in Hollywood, having taken up a movie career. However, I thought I'd better tell her she was mistaken. "No, Mother, not Cobin -- Coburn." I don't recall what her reply was, but I think she was puzzled. After all, she had been pronouncing Coburn "Cobin" all her life.

P.S. We saw that movie, and nearly every subsequent movie in which Charlie appeared.
P.P.S. Coburn had evidently kept in touch with some of the Savannah people over the years. Mother's sister, Aunt Blanche, who had moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, showed me a Christmas card she had received from him. It showed what had evidently become, over the years, his trademark: a tamoshanter and a monocle -- no face: just the tam and monocle.

Once she was in New York City, Mother studied with Mrs. Eames, mother of the Metropolitan Opera soprano Emma Eames. The Eameses were from Bath, Maine, and Emma was among the first American-born singers to sing at the Met. Needless to say, Mother attended many of Emma Eames's performances, and for years pictures of the singer in her various roles -- Elsa in Lohengrin, Marguerite in Faust, Desdemona in Otello, among others -- hung on the walls of our home.

Mother received excellent training; after all, her teacher had also been the opera singer's teacher. One result of the training was a fine sense of pitch. If she heard a singer on the radio singing flat, she would utter a cry of pretended pain and make upward motions with her hands as if to push the singer back up on key. Thanks to her training also, her pronunciation of German, French, and Italian was excellent. It was, if anything, too good. She once told me that after a recital, a woman who had been in the audience came up to her and began speaking to her in French -- an embarrassing moment. She had learned to sing French words flawlessly but had never learned to converse in French.

Mother's training, though, was not for the opera stage. Instead she sang with New York's Oratorio Society for years, and was soloist in a number of churches in the New York area. She also was a member of at least one church choir and even one synagogue choir (that of the famed Temple Emanu-El). Among the members of one of the choirs was Harry T. Burleigh, composer and arranger of Negro spirituals (as they were then called), including "Deep River". Burleigh was already well on in years when Mother knew him, and as the years went by, he would announce solemnly each year that this would be the last year he would sing "The Palms" at the Palm Sunday service.

Mother knew, directly or indirectly, a number of interesting and prominent (at least in their day) people in the music world. There was Frank Damrosch, brother of Walter. I don't recall what musical group he presided over, but my mother would say that he must have had something against tenors because he would tell the tenors exasperatedly to "sing with your brains as well as your voices." There was Victor Harris, director of the Oratorio Society, whom she admired. There was Kurt Schindler, who not only was choir director somewhere but also was compiler and arranger of a collection of songs by Russian composers (Glinka, Tschaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, et al.). One director (I don't recall who) had a stammer, and to break the stammer he would sweep his hand across his face. And there was Keith McLeod, who directed a male chorus on one of the New York radio stations, WEAF, now WNBC. It was he who got Mother a spot on WEAF for a short time. I recall seeing a note from him to Mother and noticing he had signed it with his initials, K. McL. -- my initials, too!

Most people, I suppose, who are fond of "classical" music rate the celebrated Beethoven Ninth Symphony highly. My mother did not. I think that was mainly because when the Oratorio Society performed that symphony with the New York Symphony Orchestra, the altos were always placed close to the kettledrums, and Beethoven could be unstinting with the use of that percussion instrument, especially in the Ninth, where the kettledrums attack the listener repeatedly with fortissimos. And, according to my mother, you never got enough used to them not to jump.

Besides her concert and church work, my mother did other singing: recitals. Early in this century, musicians were invited to the homes of well-to-do people -- either their New York mansions or their country estates. One such family, the Sooeysmiths (an odd name) had a place in Greens Farms, Connecticut, and my mother had happy memories of that family and that place. (I think they were the people who owned a St. Bernard dog named Clumsy.)

Finally, there were the army hospitals. World War I ended almost two years before I was born, but even as late as the mid-1920s, when I first heard about her singing to the wounded, the sight and voices of the men -- especially the faces of the
"shell-shocked" casualties -- still haunted her. What did the men of the men of the hospitals enjoy hearing? I don't know, but I suppose the songs included "There's a Long, Long Trail", "Roses of Picardy", "Over There", and "It's a Long Way to Tipperary". These, particularly the first two, were probably the very first songs I heard (that must have been when I was three or four) and the first I learned to sing. (I was particularly fond of "There's a Long, Long Trail".)

I must not neglect to mention what we in our family called the phonograph, but which others called, perversely, the grammophone, and which still others, yielding to vulgar commercialism, called the Victrola. The one we had usually sat on the floor and usually in the way, though now and then it sat on a large round wicker table, which itself was even more in the way. (A more expensive model featured the standard record player at a convenient height, with record storage space below.) Our phonograph, made by the Victor Recording Company, was, in size, about a two-foot cube. It had a deep lid, with the familiar picture of the fox terrier listening to "his master's voice" inside. The front had two doors that opened out, revealing a slatted sound chamber from which came the music or speaking voices. The steel turntable, 12 inches in diameter and covered with green felt, was nominally one-speed (78 RPM), but the machine was equipped with a speed control that pivoted: "Fast" at one end of the arc, "slow" at the other end. Being a boy, I could not resist the temptation to find out what the music sounded like at either extreme -- an experiment that annoyed my mother exceedingly. Sound was picked up from the record by the old acoustical device, which simply amplified the vibrations produced as the rotating record grooves passed under the "needle" held by the pick-up. (Needles were either steel or "wooden" -- i.e., bamboo. Both wore out after only a few plays, so the phonograph was provided with built-in cups to hold new or discarded needles.) The turntable was powered by a spring-driven motor, and a removable crank was used to wind up the spring when necessary.

Like most of the things in our home during my early years, the phonograph had already been there before I became aware of it, but the reason for its presence was obvious: the many records made by some of the singers of opera's "golden age". Caruso was certainly among them, Alma Gluck was another. I'm not sure of any of the others, though we (that is, Mother) might have had a recording or two of one of the DeReszke brothers, Jean or Eduard.

Mother got memorable glimpses of musical people, which she shared with me. One was the sight of Australian composer Percy Grainger walking up a New York City street one winter day in a snowstorm, coatless, hatless and wild-haired, and carrying a harp. She would have agreed, one guesses, that Harpo Marx could not have looked more bizarre.

Urban Renewal

2004-11-04T06:22:00.000-08:00

The slums are down
the worn-out factories are down.
All that was iniquitous
in living and in working
is erased.

Teetering tenements,
which in their age-grayed walls and windows
looked less than half alive
though sheltering the teeming families within,
began dissolving months ago
(nobody knows or asks where the families went),
leaving shameless, unapologetic blanks
that yawn the city half to death.

Ancient factories --
vast wood and brick geometries where
belts, motors, wheels, and men
made life go, loud by day, subdued
under strange blue lights at night --
cascaded awesomely, once life within was gone.
(Wreckers felled them with dispatch.) Like mulch
they lie, to quicken the new town's rising.

Someone, please ask
the planners how to renovate
integrity and vision,
dismantle bigotry, build
charity.

After the Enchantment

2004-11-04T06:13:00.000-08:00

The light wanes, the ruins cool,
and as we shift and sift the vaguening fragments,
disturbing the dark, dank air,
there mingle with the twilight mists of cannon smoke,
PT exhaust, the sweat of touch football,
and the tangy breath of books
a reek of semen, a bouquet of beauties
bedded at Pennsylvania Avenue.
We are careful how we breathe.
We pick up the broken stones
and try to see how they must fit together.
A few take certain shape,
and we mourn for a craft now lost,
design irretrievably forgotten.

Perhaps this was no Camelot, after all; might not
have been if he had lived. But we enshrined him there,
almost before the old, sun-dazzled
poet's words were done. Dazzled ourselves
by the casual elegance and the gleam of wit, warmed by the compassion of his exhortations,
we found it not too hard to dream a sun
or succored world. It was enough, perhaps,
that we could find in him these few and irreducible
nucleons of some bright substance that we needed
(as we make any god we make embody our flawed best)
and so love him as we might love whatever god it is
we make: not for what is there but for
what we imagine there must be.

Remembering the Strangeness

2004-09-17T17:18:00.000-07:00

It is called adjustment.
Every two years or so,
after we had lived
the strangeness off the walls
and floors, we watched our things
onto a van and set off
to keep an appointment with them at another cheaper place,
which spoke in untamed tongues
to us and breathed fresh paint,
stale soap, and ghosts of dinners past
in our faces when we entered:
another house to try to make home
before the two-year lease expired.
We tamed the echose with
our rugs and drapes; we added
our own brew of odors;
we let our beds, bookcases
claim the rooms as ours. But
we never liked the way
the stairway turned; or we asked
how anyone could live
with that window where it was.
Never would the house be ours.

But there was this: the thrill
of starting over -- new scenes
from every window; the search
for secret doors and tunnels;
the dreadful cellar, damp and dark,
spider-horrid, smelling of cement,
but empty, irresistible;
the arid attic, hoarding
summer's heat and winter's cold,
its not-quite-finished floor
and sloping roof angling to jaws
and an open throat, down which
a marble rolled once -- gone,
no doubt, to the center of the
Earth and where a small boy,
if he weren't careful, might
likewise go. And there was this:
the fairground dazzle of the
unfamiliar neighborhood --
from the gaudy bedspread on the line
next door, to the local bus
that rumbled past our house,
startling as a steamboat.
And there were these: reports,
savory as fresh-baked rolls
and served at supper, detailing
the day's discoveries
of the street or woods or field.

I can not get enough
of strangeness now, it seems,
when repetition
feeds only hunger for
the unexpected, the unique.
From a winsow
of the daily bus, I explore
each passed side street, abduct
sufficient strangers to populate
a reverie, search fields
to find some tree with magic
of the unfamiliar in it, and look
for houses that I never lived in --
imagining how
they would have felt to me,
a child in those moving years,
countless wonders past,
and remembering
the touch of each place,
as alien as whetstone to the blade.

Pacific Driftwood / Jottings

2004-09-17T16:24:00.000-07:00

Collected writings from the soldiers of the 136th Field Artillery Battalion in World War II.

PREFACE

"YANK" the Army Weekly had a column appearing from time to time on one of its pages called "The Poets Cornered". Much fine poetry was published there. I hope that some day the editors of "YANK" will publish a book containing the best of these literary works by, for the most part, Army enlisted men. Each one represent a soldier's point of view on a certain subject. The variety of ideas, the originality of themes, and the eloquence achieved are frequently remarkable. Some of the verses were composed in the United States, some were composed overseas in non-combat theaters, and some carried the unmistakable breath of the frontlines. After the war, many of these men will probably continue writing with the same, fine literary sensitiveness, when they have become civilians once again.

But there are verses which have never seen light of day on any page of "YANK" nor any other publication, for that matter. These were scribbled modestly on the backs of envelopes, on note-book paper, or daringly included in some letter home. Their writers may never write another line of verse or prose, for perhaps they were written in a short burst of poetic inspiration which was short-lived. However, what was written might be worth noting. That is the purpose of this book. Perhpas these unknown writers will take heart, seeing their works in print, and be encouraged to write more. I have personallly known most of these men, who prefer to remain anonymous. Some of the writers I have not even met; their works reache me indirectly, either through letters from friends who know I was collecting verse by obscure writers, or by coming across them myself, in waste paper baskets, in old bivouac areas and a dozen other equally unlikely places. It has been quite an adventure for me during my theree years in the Pacific, ranging from the Fijis to the Philippines.

I give you "Pacific Driftwood."

*

From a letter:
On a trip along the beach near Munda Air Strip, strolling among wrecks and remnants of Japanese defense installations which had been blasted to oblivion by our intense shelling and bombing, I examined some huge holes made by our high-explosive missiles. At the bottom of one such hole a tiny but sturdy zinnia bloomed defiantly. I looked around some more, and there were others similarly growing, as well as some which had sprung up at the roadside in the company of deceptively delicate petunias. It was a touching sight, and it gave me a strange, indefinable feeling. Later, when moved to write a few lines on what I saw, I tried vainly to put into words that strange, awed feeling, and am still inarticulate. Here are the lines I wrote:

A FLOWER GROWS ON A WAR-SCARRED GROUND
(Munda Point)

On this island Mars still plays his hand.
The beach is quiet now; he has moved inland.
Beneath the sun, men toil;
Digging, clearing, piling soil on soil.
Between them and the sea - a fringe of sand.

On this fringe of sand Mars left his seal.
Here, craters deep abound: imprints of his heel
In some the sea has crept;
Others remain empty - all except
For flowers, growing there with quiet zeal.

A flower grows on a war-scarred ground
Amid man's shattered tools of war strewn around.
Amid war's after-gloom
It flourishes, hanging bloom on bloom.
How strange a home this zinnia has found!
It is not alone here on the beach;
Yonder springs - oh, if it could only reach! -
Another common flower,
Dainty, fragile, holding yet some power
To draw its strength from the reluctant beach.

Zinnia and petunia, hand in hand
In Mother's garden casually appearing
Now in this almost flowerless land
Become at once exotic, rare, endearing.

I found the next item, written on a mud-splattered bit of stationefy. Like most of the poems in this collection, it was anonymous. There is an underlying bitterness in it, and in the last line, the poet tries to fling one final bit of defiant irony at the jungle itself in an attempt to overcome the sense of frustration in the jungle.

THE JUNGLE (Guadalcanal 1945)

I.
You greeted me with sultry languor,
I greeted you with grim misgiving
Into your leafy depths I gazed
And shuddered.
For man had fought and man had slaughtered
But now he lay in dark oblivion
Inside your leafy depths he lay
And rotted.
And you - you stood serenely waiting,
Yes, waiting for your wounds to heal up -
The wounds that fighting man had made -
You could wait!

II.
I stood upon the grassy hillock
And studied you with contemplation
And from your leafy depths there stirred
A whisper.
You looked enchanting in the sunlight,
Revealing naught, your air enticing,
And at your beckon all but mute,
I yielded.
I entered by a winding pathway.
How miserly you were with sunlight
As in your dark, foilescent shrine
I wandered.

III.
The lizards stirred, alert and graceful,
Their turquoise tail shined iridescent,
A flower caressed the atmosphere
With fragrance.
But suddenly there loomed before me
A grotesque tree, a gutted dirt-clod.
And there, a head macabrely grinned ...
And maggots!
And going further, I encountered
A shambles that was once a stronghold,
And there you stood, in silence mocked ...
Unconquered!

IV.
I went my way, but all night long
A dozen savage birds derided,
A dozen birds in savage voice
Yet taunted:
"Man has desecrated this our home,
And murdered his own kind before us.
He chose this place: we chose him not,
Nor approved."

L'envoi.
Soon I'll leave you and your taunting birds,
Ascend once more to grassy hillsides.
You look enchanting in the sun -
From hillsides.

***

Here is an original, merry mad bit of escapism. I see no particular reason for including it among the war-inspired verse, but it does show that a soldier's mind does turn to other things. In this, I believe he let himself go, giving imagination free rein.

SONG OF THE EARTHBOUND - A Poem Fantasy (Fijis Jan 1943)

The jagged peaks,
The pounding sea
Upon the ageless shore,
The hastening wind
Through hollow, cross meadow -
These are the heritage
Of the Earthbound.

The Earthbound sing:
An anthem old,
Religion's sacred themes,
The sweet gospel hymns
At home or in chapel -
Melodies born in hearts,
Nourished with tears.

The whippoorwill,
The coveyed quail,
The swallow on the wing,
Their magical flight
Through thicket, cross water -
These are the idolized
Of the Earthbound.

A longing aches,
An envy pains
And fancy chases thought.
"Oh, God, give us wings,
For flying, for soaring!"
Thus the supplications
Of the Earthbound.

"Oh come to the carnival, ride in the planes,
See all the crowds below!
It's just half a dollar, now, tell all your friends
That you flew way up high!"

And homeward now
The Earthbound go,
A longing satisfied.
The circling planes
O'er fairground, o'er playground -
These were the ecstasy of the Earthbound.

The earthbound sing:
A happy theme
Of Broadway's favorite songs.
They've conquered the air
In planes at the fairground!
Oh, have your revelry,
Happy Earthbound!

Here is bitterness of the most acute sort expressed in the following lines which some unknown soldier scrawled on an ink-splotched piece of paper. I cam across it while in Fiji.

SOLDIER, WHERE'S YOUR HATRED NOW? (F.I., March 1943)

Soldier,
Where's your hatred now?
You haven't any? But you ought to have.
Remember the advice we gave.
Where will you be anyhow
If you forget that you must fight,
That they are wrong, and we are right?
You must make their heads to bow.

"I will fight because I must.
My hatred falters. In the heat of war
The hatred that was once a sore
Festered with a bitter lust,
Becomes a heartache, throbbing deep,
So that I cannot help but weep
Seeing comrades fall to dust."

Soldier,
Why that tear-wet eye?
Your fallen comrades you won't see again?
Remember, this affair is plain:
You may be about to die
Like them; but while you live, be strong,
For right will conquer all that's wrong.
Fight till they for mercy cry.

"You are right, my hatred's gone,
But I remember they are human too -
Those boys who in a sick world grew,
Groping - while afar, the dawn
Awaits to shine on them again
As it has on Freedom's men.
Can I , hating, speed the dawn?"

Soldier,
Spare no love for those
Who try to tear down what we want to save.
They're bestial, and they're not so brave.
Bring conflict to a quicker close:
Destroy their tanks, destroy their planes;
It is this Justice ordains.
Give them death if death they chose!

"I will wreck their tanks and planes
And let their cities fall, for all I care,
And in the name of right, I'll tear
Their bowels out, and smash their brains,
(For you, my country, killed my soul)
And as we approach the goal,
Clamp them in Revenge's chains!"

Soldier,
Bear it for a while,
And if you find no hatred for the foe,
Hate, then, the evil that brought woe.
Hate the greed and hate the guile.
Hate, then, the motive, not the man.
Love the Truth, for if you can,
Soldier, you have won God's smile.

The following is an extract from a letter which attracted my attention. I asked the author of it if I could copy it, and he agreed. It is just a word picture of the front-line "doggie" or "dogface", the Infantryman.

This is the New Georgia doughboy, returning from the front. He's wearing his green-and-brown-mottled camouflage suit - the one he has been wearing continuously for the past three weeks. It has seldom been off of him, even to be washed - the rains take care of that. If his unit happens to be anywhere near a creek, he washes himself, but that happens only once in a while. Oh, yes, and that camouflage about his face is not really camouflage. Can he help it if the dust, kicked up from the road, sticks to his sweaty, bearded face? All available water is used for drinking, but even with the supply on New Georgia augmented by purified water from neighboring islets, he has to exercise rigid economy. His daily supply which he carries with him in two canteens doesn't last very long in New Georgia's baking sun and steaming jungles.

This doggie, like most of his buddies has been in combat for around twenty consecutive days. That means that during that time he has no hot food. His meals when he could get them, were C rations eaten right out of the can. Sometimes his fare wasn't even that sumptuous. Sometimes he subsisted on a bar of D ration chocolate a day. Now he returns, stripped down to barest essentials, without even the light battle pack he started out with. He still has his faithful M-1 Rifle with possibly some ammunition left, his precious water, first aid packet, and sulfanilamide tablets.

He trudges along the dusty road, his trousers legs rolled up to just below the knees, revealing a dirty, soggy, reeking pair of green canvass jungle boots. He walks along the road which Army engineers and Navy Sea Bees have hewn out of the jungle. But the soldier doesn't always find the road dry and dusty; all too often he slogs through channels of knee-deep mud which must serve as travel routes. On this isle of the dead and living dead, the stench of this mud suggests that decaying bodies are blended in with the soil, but the smell is more probably from rotted vegetation. When it rains in New Georgia, this is what the soldier eats in, sleeps in, lives in. Now, as he walks along with expressionless eyes focused on the ground a few paces ahead of him, his presence adds a poignantly personal touch to the procession of peeps and three-quarter tons which are laden with supplies for the front. Daily he (for "he" represents all such front line men) passes our gun positions with an air of mingled apprehension and respect. He dreads being near them when they fire, yet he wants to get a good look a t the guns that probably helped save his life. "How do you guys stand it? How do you stand the noise?" he asks with a seriousness that dumbfounds us. How do we stand it! He's been sniped at, mortar-shelled, has our artillery barrage seventy-five to one hundred yards ahead of him, and he asks us that! He comes up to the guns once in a while when there is a lull in the firing, and pats a howitzer affectionately. "I could kiss these babies," he says with a wan smile. Once he asked if we'd let him pull the lanyard that would send a 95 pound shell on its destructive mission. He was tickled as a kid with a new toy when we let him fire on the next fire mission.

He sits and exchanges a few words with us; he's never very talkative - sits and broods a lot. As he gets up to leave, his valedictory usually is: "Keep shootin' them out there. It sure is good to hear them land." Though they go through hell, that is all that he and his buddies ever ask of us, that we keep shootin' out there, and they'll carry on their share.

And they more than live up to their word.
.............................

Here is another extract from a letter (again, taken with permission of the author) written somewhere near Baguio, on Luzon in the Philippines. It certainly is a novel outlook which he has. I might call it his

THOUGHTS ON A FALLEN ENEMY

It was pure curiosity which led me to investigate a Japanese who had been killed about eight hours before, during the night. Before I saw the body itself, I saw a heap of clothing - or rather, rags - and I thought to myself: Is it possible that that shapeless object is a man? As I got closer, however, I saw the fallen enemy. After the first brief shock at the sight, I went ahead, dispassionately, coldly looking at him.

He was lying on his back, resembling a piece of wax statuary, with one hand flung across his waist, holding a bloodstained handkerchief (he had been machine-gunned in the stomach), and the other arm was crooked up with the hand resting near his head. His age was certainly under eighteen, and his youthful flesh was firm though colored a strange, waxy, yellow-white hue. His head was turned to one side, revealing a clean, bloodless hole in the neck where he had been shot by one not knowing he was already dead. His eyes were slightly open, and his lips parted. His boyish, beardless face was not entirely expressionless. On it I fancied I could see an expression revealing a boy trying to solve one of the great mysteries of life, a mystery that was beyond his grasp. He could not understand life, particularly this business of war. In his last few moments of mortal existence was he asking himself if the Emperor was worth dying for, after all? At least, the cruel arrogance and fatalistic defiance which contort so many a Jap face with hard lines, was entirely absent, but there was a look of disillusionment, or so it seemed.

It was well-nigh impossible to reconcile mentally this fallen form which was no longer man, to that human geing who, around midnight, had crept into our battalion area armed with a Nambu light machine gun and a few grenades. A few hours before daylight this form had been a man, a live, moving target for our small arms fire. Now the man was absent, leaving an inanimate something simulating man. As I gazed at him, a subtle voice whispered something within me. "But is this man?" it asked doubtingly. "This is not God's man, nor was it ever. For God's man is spiritual, which plainly this object is not. Therefore, be not shocked at what you see here, for what you see here is not man. See, what little difference there is between this form, now so inanimate, and the animated form it once was! A beating heart, respiring lungs - that's really the only difference, and one is no more the real Man than the other, so be not disturbed at this sight."

I didn't stay long. An instinct, deeper than educated morals or proprieties, deeper too than metaphysical suggestions or speculations, prompted me to leave the dead in peace. I had trespassed long enough. While it ws not Man, it was, or had been, a man's property, and deserved something better than the stare of the morbidly curious which was accorded it. Let it be put away then, into the Earth, gently, quietly. And let there be an end to the indignities of being regarded as some kind of curiosity. As I left, I hoped it would soon be buried - and forgotten.

JOTTINGS ...

NEW GEORGIA

So now we are in the jungle and are learning what jungle warfare is. It is a strange sort of business. We have learned too, all the implications of the phrase: "Island Warfare" because of inter-island strategy as well as intra-island strategy. It is a dangerous business, too, for here we are fighting a practically invisible enemy which has been trained far more thoroughly than we have. It is here that inactivity plays on one's nerves as much as activity. The one saving grace has been the sense of humor exhibited by all the men, by and large, even durprisingly enough, by the men on the front lines. I met one Tennessee fellow whose unconscious humor and accent was something you think only exists in Hollywood or on the radio. He said the boys in his outfit were all in high spirits and could see the funny side of things. With great gusto and plenty of sound effects he described how a Jap machine gun nest was silenced by one of our own machine guns. Credit and praise a thousand fold greater than mere words can express is due the infantrymen.

Out of this jungle, where all growth is vertical, "Sea Bees" and the Army Engineers are hewing roads. Without these men, prosecution of our strategy here would be well-nigh impossible. The vine-fettered jungle rings with axe blows and cries of "Timber-r". These men are fighting too; fighting nature which is as stubborn and tenacious as our real enemy. Roads aren't roads around here, until they are corduroyed; they are unvegetated lanes of mud. But the Engineers and Navy Construction Battalions are winning.

Mosquitos here almost negligible in number but the flies are many times thicker than anywhere else I've been.

We arrived at Guadalcanal early in April and that very night got our "baptism of fire", our first air raid. I was alarmed naturally, but more frightening moments were ahead; the Fourth of July raid on Rendova, for example, while we were at mess below decks on an LST. We were all shaken, mentally, that is, but thre was nothing we could do except finish our meal and try to enjoy it. With wry humor some of the fellows said if they were going to die, they might as well do it on a full stomach. It is a helpless feeling, being locked up below deck and just listening - listening to our 20mm, 40mm, and 3-inch guns, and an occasional bomb dropping near us. One of the most, if not the most terrifying experience I had was on New Georgia. There was a bombing raid one night. I don't know how many enemy planes there were but there were more than one. Eight bombs were dropped and a small group of us were in a direct line with them and between where the fourth and fifth lighted. The first four kept getting closer, and we were positive the fifth would hit us; but it went beyond, as did the remaining bombs. The swish of those bombs hurtling earthward with hellish fury is something I won't forget for a long time.

Guadalcanal was a sad and beautiful spot. If one could detach the beauty of the island from the ugly atmosphere of war and reminders of war which still clung to it, he would not find it the terrible place it is reputed to be. The green, grassy hills, fringed with trees are lovely in the sunlight, even though the shell holes pock-mark them, making them look like humps of green, moth-eaten carpteing.

Our first camp there was on the site of much fearful carnage Grenade Hill. The melancholy scent of sweet tragedy filled the air. The jungle at night was redolent with the sad, sweet smell of some jungle flower; sad because of the seeming futility of it. The once-savage jungle now seemed subdued. In this green, foilescent shrine lay the men who died gloriously and ingloriously - Yank and Jap. In Guadalcanal we [saw the] reason our forces had such a time routing the enemy: the huge, grotesque, white-mottled banyan trees between whose high, wide-spread roots the enemy entrenched himself. These trees were found wherever there was jungle, most of them, their roots and trunks riddled with bullet holes. Further evidences of the attention the Japs paid to digging in were seen on New Georgia. There they made use of the huge chunks of coral, a substance heavy and hard as rock. Enough of this coral piled around a hole three to four feet deep made a shelter surprisingly resistant to shell concussions.

The day we landed on New Georgia at Lambeti Plantation, we were able for the first time to appreciate fully the devastating effectiveness of our artillery. All the land that had undergone the terrific artillery fire was all but denuded of live vegetation. Shattered remnants of coconut palms drooped pathetically, resembling gaunt weeping willows. The Air Force contributed to the destruction of this area. I could see this as I walked along the road from the Plantation to the Munda Airfield. All along the way were holes that could have been made only by 100 or 200-pound bombs. There was something curious about these bomb craters, something besides the fact that they were used as water points and swimming holes; it was grass and flowers which had sprung up in the inside. Most of the bomb craters looked like freshly made excavations with the sand, coral, etc. thrown outside around the edges. But some looked like natural depressions in the naturally uneven ground, so overgrown were they. Symbolic, it seemed, were zinnias - just common pink, garden zinnias one finds in the garden at home - growing from the depths of bomb craters. Yes, in a way they were symbolic of the good, the God-created, the enduring, and everlasting, which reappears untouched after the fury of man's wrath has spent itself.

War theaters are no place for civilians, particularly women and children. A war is something that only those in the service of their country should experience. War is brutal and no longer are civilians spared of its hellishness simply because they are civilians. It is brutal enough for men under arms when giving and taking blows; it is tragic when civilian populations can only take blows. I am grateful that so far I have been spared witnessing this great tragedy of war; for over here the civilian population is composed of a handful of natives who have been virtually untouched by war. Principally, the Solomon Islands have been a theater of operations in the strictest sense of the word, the site on which the armed forces of both sides have met in conflict to help determine the course of the war. It is a fighting man's land with no place for the frailties of a civilian populace, a land-and-sea battlefield.

.............................

GUADALCANAL REVISITED

We had two short months of combat in our first campaign, and some more months to come in the next one. Meanwhile we are at Guadalcanal again.

I was down on the road along the beach the other day, and studied the familiar landscape. Behind a slate-blue veil of haze, wearing cloud banks on their heads like huge turbans, the mute hills sat, immovable, cold, detached, indifferent to everything else, especially to man, who, more industrious than ever, was busy landing, unloading, loading, and hauling.

But the results of man's efforts are there, challenging, impossible to ignore. The miraculous change wrought by Army's Engineers and Navy's Sea Bees has now removed all vestiges of what was once a battlefield. Shell holes, bomb craters, and shattered palms are only dim memories of the past. In this busy place all vestiges of the past are brusquely pushed aside, into the background, into oblivion, for the new Guadalcanal must rise, and is doing just that. It is now a complete and efficient Army and Navy base. Air raids are non-existent for the enemy's air force and its activities in this area are non-existent.

We'd better enjoy this place while we can (if we can) for in a short while we will be in Bougainville for another jungle campaign.

CONVOY

This is a large convoy.

Some of us who wnet to New Georgia on D-plus-four and Bougainville on D-plus-seventeen remember only small convoys of LST's and other craft. This time it is D and D-plus-one, and the gigantic convoy is comprised of hundreds of ships and small crafts of many types.

It began placidly, as other convoys, in a matter-of-fact way, on schedule, at 0830. We stood along the rails as we always had, and watched the island diminish in the distance. The ship rolled gently to the accompanyment of the vague throbbing of the engines and the steady roar of the blowers which supply ventilation to the troop compartments below decks. Little flutters of white all over the deck indicated card games; poker, casino, cribbage.

Out on the Pacific, still that same remarkable, incredible blue, ships were everywhere; you could not look anywhere without seeing a transport or warship most of which were cleverly camouflaged.

This war has brought into usage the term, "staging area" which is just another way of saying rendezvous point or final springboard from which the ultimate assault is to be launched. Manus Island in the Admiralties was our staging area and our destination after laying over a few days in Lae, New Guinea. As we approached our staging area, we viewed it with the same glum curiosity we've viewed all the other dozen or so islands we've visited. The [dominant] feature about it was, I think, the amount of water traffic. It was here that the nautical gamut was run; from barges to baby flat-tops; boats you'd never dream of seeing in such a remote Pacific island; coal-burners, oil-burners; native dugouts and non-descript sailboats; sleek, fast cabin boats which made the harbor look like regatta day at the yacht club. Planes from our carriers swooped and circled in mock attacks.

Night, as usual, stole in while our backs were turned. We always seemed to be at supper during the transitional twilight. Coming up on deck, sweaty after being in the hot mess hall we were atonished the first night, and mildly surprised on subsequent nights, to see that it was already dark. Most startlingly of all, however, was the amount of lights which extended along a considerable portion of the shoreline. They were lights in the corrugated metal huts which were laid out row beside row. All over the spaceous harbor too were lights, the lights of shps: green ones, red ones, amber ones, lights of the blue of an electric arc, beside which the white lights appeared yellowish. They blinked frantically, irrelevantly, in an unrhythmic dissonance of light. Then, as the call to quarters was heard piped on our own and one or two neighboring ships, troops trickled below, activity on the ship was diminished, and the frenzied, hysterical glitter of lights subsided, for they too were tired of talking. There remained only a few red or green lights which hovered over their respective ships like lights on second floors of houses back home, kept on by stay-up-lates. On deck there was still an occasional glow of a cigaret and the hum of desultory conversation. A half-moon with a misty collar hung in the sky, and one fancied he could see it rush toward the tip of the mast, then retreat before quite touching it; rush and retreat, rush and retreat. The blowers whirred a bereceuse. The time for sleeping was at hand.

A glorious sunrise the beignning of each day. On e morning, a day or so out from land, clouds in the distance made interesting patterns. Some simulated huge skulking, huddling figures marching on two legs in procession. On the tip of the mast of one of the ships, a cloud created an odd optical illusion: a gigantic weathercock perching on the mast tip. Then, gradually, it metamorphosed into a rather grotesque turkey with an extended neck. Finally, even that illusion faded and there was nothing left but a smudge of cloud.

LINGAYEN GULF

Lingayen Gulf was our destination, and now it is S-day, the day of days. The letter S, by the way, was used in this operation to signify the day of assault, rather than the letter D. Early in the morning our ship was resounding with jolts which sounded like gloved fists pounding on sheet iron. On deck the sound was sharper and more distinct. The air was electric. It was one of those rare moments when you can feel the tingle of excitement. You know what the excitement is about - know only too well, and you feel that every molecule of moisture in the clouds, every particle of dust and smoke in the air, every grain of sand on the yonder beach, and every salty drop of Lingayen Gulf must know about it too. For hours the air has been reverberating with gunfire. During that thime there had been hardly a second's silence, an instant when some gun somewhere has not been heard.

By now nothing surprised us, not even the staggering number of ships and boats. They moved about in all directions, and the appearance was rather chaotic, but that was purely illusion, for in reality every movement from the BB down to the LCVP was carefully planned and faithfully executed.

So off goes the Infantry. H-hour is 1000, a rather unique time for beachhead landings which are usually made at dawn. Three and a half hours later a shore party from our ship, composed of artillery men and of which I was one, went ashore, dug in about 100 yards in and waited for the first boatload of rations and ammunition. The surf was moderate (very rough on subsequent days), and we waded ashore in knee-deep water which became waist-deep with every wave. It was incredible. It was extraordinary. It was the quietest beachhead I'd ever heard of. The naval shelling had ceased in our sector, and the infantry was so far inland by now that if there was any fire, we could not hav heard it. Soon we learned of the first man killed in our sector - he was gored to death by an angry caribao. Enemy opposition was light. That night many of us slept in fox holes - a needless precaution, as it turned out. During the night a GMC with its lights brazenly bright came down and took away a load or rations or ammunition. There were two or three air raids but they were on the shipping and most of the night was quiet and uneventful. In keeping with the incongruous nature of everything, guards sat on ration boxes in the ration and ammo dump, smoked, and talked easily and relaxedly in low tones - so as not to disturb the men who were sleeping. There was a lot to talk about. That Jap suicide diver, for instance, whose plane narrowly missed our shp and the one next to ours, but crashed in the water and splattered, scattering fire and wreckage in all diirections. In retrospect we tried to analyze our feelings during the day. As I said, we ceased being surprised at anything. During the pre-landing shelling there was hardly a man below decks. We all found the highest point of vantage on the ship we sould, without being chased off, and watched the fun, determined not to budge for anything short of a Jap sea or air armada. There on the beach we also recalled the fateful hour of 1330 when we struglled down the debarkation nets with packs, carbines, and cumbersome kapok jackets. We grimly and solemnly averred that this was by far the worst phase of any campaign. Sweating and gasping, we reached the LCVP and took off for shore. A few minutes from the ship we exhibited nervous curiosity over a lone Jap plane streaking across the night sky midst a thick storm of 20mm shells. It was far off and we agreed we'd be satisfied if that was as close as any would come. And so the night passed. And in the morning we listened incredulously to the far-off crowing of a rooster. Civilization!

....................

This poem by an unknown author speaks for itself. I forget where I got it; I came across it one day tucked away with a lot of letters. It speaks for itself.

ON SHIPBOARD (August 1948)

At night upon the lurching sea
I seek the stars for consolation.
The blessed stars hang o'er the ship
So permanent, so reassuring.
When petty trials wax sickening,
And faces radiate displeasure,
I look across eternities
To gain perspective and proportion.
They're always there, though men contest
And calculate with puny measures.

But there are times, when often clouds
Will separate me from the stardust;
And then I peer out over the rail
Into the firmament below me
And watch the gay processional
Of tiny, dancing water-stars.
Their bubbling frivolity,
Though captivates and cheers a little,
It buoys not the weighted thought.
So I glance heavenward, but now I see
A cloudless sky; and all is right;
For there they are again - the stars!

..........

I was caught in the act of looking over the shoulder of the man who wrote this. I wanted to see what it was that he was writing. Reluctantly he showed it to me. I took a fancy to it, and asked if I could have a copy of it, explaining that it was sort of a pastime of mine to collect odds and ends of verse. He agreed to let me copy it but insisted that I omit his name. He held up his end of the bargain; I'm holding up my end. This poem makes a fitting end for this little volume.

THE BROKEN VIOLIN

At the first hesitant strains
I stopped and listned.
Through an open window cam
Music of a violin.
It rang out in the stillness
A brave and lone voice.
Fragmented patterns
Of Bach and Paganini
Were its halting narrative,
Until, abruptly,
It stopped; and silence
Continued where it left off.

A few choked up syllables,
Then shattering wood -
I heard a voice say:
"I've outlived my usefulness.
My service to the public
Had its day to live
And today is gone.
The world these days is sober
And has no time for music.
Though such diversioin
I would gladly give,
Yet my violin rings out
Like laughter at a funeral."

All was still again.
Then, from down the street
A cry was hard. A newsboy
Was calling all to hear him.
What was he saying?
"The war is over"?
It's over! Let there be joy!
And did the tidings reach him
Who by the window
Sat and brooded long?
I think they did, for even as
I departed thence away
I heard him sobbing.

......................