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Robert Frost
They sent him back to her. The letter came
Saying.... And she could have him. And before
She could be sure there was no hidden ill
Under the formal writing, he was in her sight,
Living. They gave him back to her alive--
How else? They are not known to send the dead--
And not disfigured visibly. His face?
His hands? She had to look, to ask,
‘What is it, dear?’ And she had given all
And still she had all--they had--they the lucky!
Wasn’t she glad now? Everything seemed won,
And all the rest for them permissible ease.
She had to ask, ‘What was it, dear?’
‘Enough,
Yet not enough. A bullet through and through,
High in the breast. Nothing but what good care
Halted against the shade of a last hill,
They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease
And, finding comfortable chests and knees
Carelessly slept. But many there stood still
To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,
Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.
Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled
By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,
For though the summer oozed into their veins
Like the injected drug for their bones' pains,
Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,
Fearfully flashed the sky's mysterious glass.
Hour after hour they ponder the warm field --
And the far valley behind, where the buttercups
Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,
When I was small, a Woman died --
Today -- her Only Boy
Went up from the Potomac --
His face all Victory
To look at her -- How slowly
The Seasons must have turned
Till Bullets clipt an Angle
And He passed quickly round --
If pride shall be in Paradise --
Ourself cannot decide --
Of their imperial Conduct --
No person testified --
But, proud in Apparition --
That Woman and her Boy
Pass back and forth, before my Brain
As even in the sky --
God knows how many times
I have stood frozen in the hot street
with rifles pointing at my crotch
& watched myself – small
& impossibly thin – in the oil-black
mirrors of their sunglasses.
They never take them off, not even
to enter a mosque. God knows
they are easy to hate.
But after the explosion when
I ran with the others to look, suddenly
I felt shame for all the things
I had thought. One howled, the other
bled in silence, eyes naked
to the sun. I bent down.
Above the smooth cheeks
a half-moon
over the maps of several
poor countries
that sullen bastard will go at midnight
take the child and dance it
in his arms
guarded by his horse
the soldier is a flying army
in his head
going to be married
so the rape is hushed up
mouths receive the sacrament
whose bread
would pay for a war
blood on the back stairs
not capable of bearing children
I look about to see
if I could hope
we live still
in a boreal poem
but now like a sudden letter
coming from a soldier
soldiers
make way for a swan
that high rattle
the soldiers quiet
in morning sunshine
at the door of a wine-house
only passing through
like a dark high flock
with nothing else
we give the general a field
for the soldiers to lie in
like played cards
To go to war
is to muster and shut up,
to exchange cheer for a cell.
I stay drunk, a thing
for finishing.
(No hope is to go.)
I ate all summer, as much as I could.
Tell me a king will come and soldiers
drink in the streets.
I stay a bear.
bottles of raw wine
the old soldiers
sit on the street singing
through wind and cold