Wars Don’t Happen Anymore
Poems
Sarah White
deer b rook edi tio n s
pu bl i sh e d b y Deerbrook Editions P.O. Box 542 Cumberland, ME 04021 www.deerbrookeditions.com issuu.com/deerbrookeditions 2 07. 829. 5038 Page 63 serves as an extension of this copyright page.
f i r st e di t ion 978 - 0 -9 9 0 42 87-5 - 6
i s b n:
© 2015 by Sarah White All rights reserved Front cover and title page art, “Apollinaire’s Helmet” by Sarah White. Back cover art, “Fallen Warrior” by Sarah White. Book and cover design by Jeffrey Haste.
Contents PART I.
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My mother lived so long 11 The Sword is Sharper Than the Word 12 Old Norse Warriors 13 The Devastation of the Indies 14 1. Prologue 14 2. Bees at War 15 3. Call and Response in Santo Domingo 16 Epigram, after Clément Marot (1496-1544) 17 The Empress’s Magenta Shawl 18 The Heiress and the Empress 19 Beautiful Things About War 21 Celestial Time is Not Sequential 22 One Thread in the Bayeux Tapestry 23 Steeple 24 PART II. Music Hall at the Front The Golden Virgin (1914-18) 1915 Wedding Song Tender Enemy To the Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty Gallipoli Movie Delirium, or, Song of the Field Hospital The Yanks Are Coming! After a Dogfight (Duet for Tenor and Baritone) Apollinaire’s Steel Helmet Enemy of the Teutons For Icarus
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PART III. The Girl Who Could Read 41 Our War Hero 43 Off we go into the wild blue yonder 45 The Missouri of Memory 46 we are all sons of bitches 48 Nothing but good 49 A Question Never Asked Before or Since 50 Remembrance, like a young soldier 51
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The Duel 52 Children can be taught bloodthirsty behavior 54 Deployment Sonnet 55 The One Who Wandered 56 Soul in the First Circle 57 war feels to me an oblique place 58 . . . inscribed with our human likeness 59 Bring me my bow of burning gold 60 Cirque de la Lune 61 Acknowledgements 63 NOTES 64 BIO 65 More praise 66
to Irene and Reginald Melhado
Julia and Charles Willems and all who lost their children
Part I
My mother lived so long that two of her brothersin-law fought in the Great War— Owen, fallen in the Dardanelles, Allan, scarred by flames that consumed his fragile plane, . . . so long she grieved year after year for her cousin born at the height of the First War, shot at the start of the Second, Mort pour la France. “instantly, painlessly,” she was told, . . . long enough to be half-blind in a nursing home when the glow and rumble of Desert Storm reminded her of a peasant girl named Joan burned alive in 1431. “That was long ago. I was young,” she said. “War was terrible. Thank God it doesn’t happen any more.”
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The Sword Is Sharper Than the Word 12
A plain steel blade made the bayonet lethal. A simple boulder served to kill Abel. One clever teen assembles IED’s. Another learns to maneuver drones. How to Make Love, Not War? Love is as rare as precious metals. Hate spreads over the roads like gravel.
Old Norse Warriors for Benjamin Bagby Sven Svenson, in sudden skirmish, set upon his only son. I sing of men masked, helmeted, metal-mantled. Said Svenson: “Whoa! I must know whom I’m slaughtering. Your parentage was What?” “Weary horseman, I am Snorri Svenson-son, a waif when my old man went warring (whoring too, I’ll wager.)” The elder Warrior, wit-wounded, roared: “Obscene Offense!” and, with oaken lance, unhorsed the younger. One-on-one on foot they fought swords in the open. Sven, incensed by impudence, ran a sword through his once cherished son. So goes the story as I heard it. Kinder versions exist. To me, this one rings true: Vainglory trumps the memory of Affection. I was raised in that tradition.
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The Devastation of the Indies 14
1. Prologue Bartolomé de Las Casas wants a goat for his birthday. “No goat,” his father says: “You’re getting something better.” “Lord,” thinks the lad, “let it not be a sword.” Worse than a sword, it’s a tawny boy brought to Seville from the Indies.
“What will I do with him?” “Whatever you want. He’s yours.”
him.”
“I want him gone.” “Then, take him out in a boat and drown
Bartolomé won’t look the stranger in the eye. If you see the two standing side by side, you’ll think the tall Amerindian is Master and the sullen Spaniard his Slave.
2. Bees At War Hector Poullet, a poet, linguist, teacher and entrepreneur, pollinates his vanilla plants, flower by flower, with a Q-tip. He explains that here on Guadeloupe there once were stingless bees, Meliponini, that specialized in pollinating vanilla, and their entire population was exterminated by more aggressive swarms brought from Europe. Gardeners like him, who want to grow vanilla, have to rise at the fleeting moment of the morning when the flower opens and pollen can successfully be transferred from stamen to anther. To the visitor, this story of extinction sounds like an allegory in which European bees figure conquistadors and colonizers while the stingless bees are Arawaks felled by Carib spears, Caribs stung in turn by Spanish swords and guns.
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3. Call and Response in Santo Domingo “The sky is flooded with light!” “A light in the shape of the Cross! the work of God’s hand!” “I shit in God’s hand.” “Shit on the blind guy who runs this country. He put the Cross in the sky . . .” “A Cross of light bulbs that drains all the power from our neighborhood.” “It makes me happy to see our power in the Cross.” “I’d rather have it in my TV so I could see the telenovelas.” “But the Cross is on the roof of the world’s biggest lighthouse!” “A tomb for the bones of Columbus.” “I shit on the bones of Columbus!” “The greatest navigator in history!” “He saw Santo Domingo and thought it was China. He must have been as blind as our blind guy.” “Or as me. I can’t see a thing in my own house.” “You call that a house? What’s to see in that hen-coop?” “I almost saw Tomas return to his lover Imelda. He had just come to her door when the screen went blank.” “Pobrecita! I’ll bet you were hoping for something to have a good cry about!” “A bunch of Dominicans in the dark under a Cross—isn’t that enough to cry about?”
Epigram, after Clément Marot, 1496(?)-1544
When the infernal Judge Maillart was taking Lord Semblançay to die on Falcon Hill, Which of them do you suppose was making The best of things? Observe them well: Maillart seemed like someone deathly ill. Semblançay was such a firm old man You’d think he was the one whose steady hand Led Maillart up to hang on Falcon Hill.
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The Empress’s Magenta Shawl 18
She wears it in honor of Paris chemists who invented the color and named it in honor of a great victory: Red blood of infantry, blue blood of cavalry, mingled in honor of the Emperor, flooding the fields of Magenta, Italy. A snow white horse went purple, whinnied and stumbled in honor of its fallen rider.
The Heiress and the Empress August, 1870. Vuitton trunks, fainting spells, painting tutors, timid suitors. Julia Newberry would rather be at home in Chicago with her studio, her piano, her cousin Minnie, and dollies on the windowsill. It was the widowed mother and ailing elder sister whose hearts were set on France, now at war. Julia, following the news, tells her Diary she’d like to help the Empress, almost alone at the Tuileries, while the Emperor and his generals botch the battles. Her Highness and the girl have the same couturier. Magenta is the latest color. Poor Parisians steal zoo animals for food, hurl paving stones at one another. I wish I had command of Paris. Women, children, useless cowards I would send to the interior. Troublemakers would be shot. October, one year later: With Mr. and Mrs. Bonaparte exiled and forgotten, a telegram arrives in Paris: Half Chicago is in ashes— every North Side home is gone except for Mr. Ogden’s. Julia, pale on a divan, her spirit leaden, fills the Diary with woe: An Inventory of Burned Things: Mama’s lovely bonbonniere; all the family silver fused inside a molten safe;
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twenty-five dollies, poor wretches, all roasted in turn; and, o misery, the library— every note she wrote to Papa treasured just the same as those from President Buchanan, Fenimore Cooper, Aaron Burr and other men with famous names.
Beautiful Things About War A blue-black curtain darkens warriors’ minds as they fall on the Trojan plain Crimson emblems wave when Charlemagne’s men march from Spain, through mountains, to martyrdom The rockets’ red glare, the white horses, handsome even empty-saddled, stumbling, neighing The sculpted gates, shined boots, trim brown uniforms of troops, even tattered coats sewn with tell-tale stars, firestorms, thick stems of cloud, the beauty of beauty’s disappearance.
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Heaven’s Time is Not Sequential 22
In God’s eyes, everything on Earth occurs at once: The Hundred Years War, The Thirty Years War, the War of 1812…All war’s prayers and wishes rise together— Julia Willems in Bordeaux, pleads: If my missing boy does not survive the battle, may I never see another soldier come home to wife or mother. Etty Hillesum in Amsterdam keeps a journal as her lovers, cousins, neighbors are shunted onto Eastbound trains: I don’t want to be safe. I hope I’m sent to every camp in Europe! God decides to grant a special wish to Mike, a soldier in Afghanistan. Maybe he’d like the Taliban to quit firing on his unit? O no! Bring them on. I’m here to be shot at. Back home, I never get a high like that.
One Thread in the Bayeux Tapestry Nearly a thousand years ago, dipped in rust-red dye, combed, and stitched into this margin, I became the helmet on a severed Saxon head. In a distant panel, among the million threads, my brother is a grey-blue band around the belly of a wine-barrel. Our Needlework Ordeal depicts the Conquest of the English throne by the Duke of Normandy. His consort, Matilda, is said to have designed the embroidery to demonstrate that the invasion, though murderous, was entirely lawful. It was she, not my brother or I, who chose the parts we would play in the bloody affair.
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Steeple 24
A slender sentinel ruled our hill town. One afternoon, it told a thankful child to open her hymnal, told the boys to ring bells and celebrate the end of a long, hard, war. Some years later, the girl, summoned again by the steeple, stood at the altar too soon, too young, a puff of wedding gown. Today, the same spire commands the village like a tall, white capital A. Bells peal for Common Prayer, funerals, and weddings among the hopeful young. Today, a few from town enlist in distant battles. The bells are mute when soldiers go, mute when they come home.
Part II