poetry lamenting war #18

The Billion Freedoms


Yes, then, always, as the rain, a star,
Or snow, the snow, snow,
Faces in the village, many dead on the roads
Of Europe, guns, go, yell, fall, O wait, what
Does life do, I know, knew, go mad, life goes
Mad, as the gentle rain, run, as the cold death
Comes into, into you, into the
Star-being man, is it quiet, quiet in the ground,
I grin, gunned silly, noble, it is noble to be part
Of, of the lie, it is a lie, war is, war is a lie,
What else is war, war is also a lie, love is not
A lie, love is greater, O love is greater
Than war, wake my brothers, love is not a, lie,
Live, as the earth, as the, sun,
Stand in the beautiful, be, as the clean, full, fine,
Strong lives stood, hated, mocked, despised, drowned
In the sewers of poverty,
And in the sewers of State, as Christ was, for
He believed in life,
He believed in love, and in death, war, and greed,
He did not believe, and any man who speaks
Of a Christian war, or of war as the savior
Of anything, that man is a liar, and
A, murderer, for no man can acquire position,
Or goods, or selfrighteousness
In a lie, except he be himself an enemy of truth,
And life, and God,
And a defiler in the temple of his kind, faces
in the villages of the world, millions dead
On the roads in Europe, what sin against reason
Is this, that they fought, fight, in a war
To save the evils
That cause war, for war is no evil
To those who have warred against the people,
And against truth, always, what crime
Against the soul of man is this, this fraud,
This mockery of life, that what is cheapest,
And dirtiest, and most debased, is thus smugly
Stamped on the forehead of, Christ, Who said,
Says, in the authority of God, thou shalt not
Kill, or take from another, O what are men
For, or God, now, as the light, and the good,
And the truth, and the love of one poor creature
For his fellow, fall, and the grandeur
Of mankind, like a blind snake,
Crawls, on its belly, into the slimy
pit of oblivion, yes, then, always, as the rain,
A star, or as a fire burning forever in, all men.

--Kenneth Patchen, Cloth of the Tempest, 1943. Selected Poems. New York: New Directions, 1957.

LINKS:
This Kenneth Patchen page was put together at the request of his wife, Miriam, who died in 2000.

Kenneth Patchen's papers are in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

Biography from the Academy of American Poets.