War and Peace

A huge vista of life and suffering humankind 
which makes the present troubles easier to endure, 
and the loneliness of death a little thing.

Siegfried Sassoon

Clouds came down and blotted the landscape 
and we squatted in a vineyard and smoked 
our pipes by the blaze of dry olive-branches. 

In the cloudy weather after rain
the clearness of the hills and glens 
shifted from shadow to gleams of watery light 

and the skylines were clean-cut 
and delicate-edged. The hills looked green—
there was a look of Ireland about it.

And when we got home to camp 
I found a letter from Dorothea, 
the good soul, full of Limerick hunting, 

and hounds flying over the big green banks.
Our padré rather drunk to-night 
after all the communion wine he’d blessed

and been obliged to ‘finish up’. 
And the news from remote France 
grows more ominous every day.

(From Siegfried Sassoon’s diary, 1918)

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(Remix of Like Ghosts)

Three good pictures

My life is a short, intense celebration. 
With almost every breath I take, I get 

a new sense and understanding 
of the linden tree, of ripened wheat, 

of hay, and of mignonette. 
I suck everything up into me. 

When it’s warm and I’m tired, I sit down 
and weave a yellow garland, a blue one, 

and one of thyme. A reaper in a blue smock. 
He mows down all the little flowers 

in front of my door. I know now of two 
other pictures with death in them.

(From Paula Modersohn-Becker’s diary, 1900

Turned to glass

The bodies in the container 
partially thawed, moved, 
and then froze again 

— stuck to the capsule 
like a child’s tongue 
to a cold lamp post. 

Eventually the bodies 
had to be thawed to unstick, 
re-frozen and put back in. 

Cracks appeared,
cutting through the skin 
and subcutaneous fat, 

all the way down 
to the body wall or 
muscle surface beneath. 

The organs were cracked. 
The spinal cord was snapped 
and the heart — was fractured.

(From Horror Stories of Cryonics)

The last supper

Looking back, 
I think the regret about the fruit salad 
was stronger than fear of all being over.

Nella Last

All the day, the tinkle of glass 
being swept up and dumped in ash-bins 
like wind-bells in a temple, 
together with the knock-knock 
as anything handy was tacked 
in place over gaping windows.

I look at a tin of fruit longingly, 
now that fruit is so scarce.
Little sparrows had died as they crouched. 
It looked as if they had bent 
their little heads in prayer.
Not one falleth that He does not see.

Poles, Czechs, Greeks, all sparrows. 
I’ve opened the tin of fruit salad, 
and put my best embroidered cloth on, 
and made an egg-whip instead of cream. 
I’ll not take my clothes off tonight. 
I’ll give the animals an aspirin.

(from Nella Last’s World War II diary, 1941)

Imprint

Drove in a blue daze thru Kinderhook 
with it almost raining. 
Lights on in the stucco house. 
Jason in a steep decline, screamed 
is the damn house on the market, 
you don’t need a sump pump. 

Dust, sawdust, a week of spaghetti 
glued on plates piled near the sink. 
I try to make tea out of dust. 
See my own house exploding like a baby 
left alone in a house with no food 
chewing on electric wires. By four

sawdust glues my eyelids together 
and I curl into a cocoon of myself 
under a quilt where it’s black. 
I wake up dragged down too, wanting 
to sleep thru the month 
tho the bed smells of cats. 

The pizza Jason brings onto the blue spread 
dries. A pawmark hardens in it 
like catprints in old bricks. 
We put our names in the cement last August 
and the cat’s paw on a day 
it was too hot and humid to dry.

(From Lyn Lifshin’s Diary, 1977)