poetry lamenting war #9
Mar. 28th, 2003 06:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyFear Row
First we marched only in dark and whispers,
then muttered echoless in trenches
oozing our brothers, those stinking sleepers
who were once green and scared wayfarers.
For them too it was cheers and wenches
before they marched only in dark and whispers.
Like ghosts afraid of day, shadowless creepers,
we accepted slime, rejected human touches,
and oozed freely with our stinky, sleeping brothers.
Now, that morning still, or again propped near
any bugle, or when a party-fool mentions
war, marching in first dark and whispers
should I remember a snow of tattered papers?
A fast amazing light, one word, one wrench
of pain and we walked in dark and whispers.
Who dives for the floor anymore at firecracker
time? See those "problems" on hospital benches,
stinking sleepers who ooze with whispers
as if their dark march could make us brothers.
--William Hathaway, The Gymnast of Inertia. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.
NOTE:
Yes, another villanelle.
Google and I couldn't find any websites worth the mention on William Hathaway (although a number on Shakespeare's sonnets, from the camp which backs Shakespeare's brother-in-law for the role of W.H. ... the things you find on the internet. *sigh*)
First we marched only in dark and whispers,
then muttered echoless in trenches
oozing our brothers, those stinking sleepers
who were once green and scared wayfarers.
For them too it was cheers and wenches
before they marched only in dark and whispers.
Like ghosts afraid of day, shadowless creepers,
we accepted slime, rejected human touches,
and oozed freely with our stinky, sleeping brothers.
Now, that morning still, or again propped near
any bugle, or when a party-fool mentions
war, marching in first dark and whispers
should I remember a snow of tattered papers?
A fast amazing light, one word, one wrench
of pain and we walked in dark and whispers.
Who dives for the floor anymore at firecracker
time? See those "problems" on hospital benches,
stinking sleepers who ooze with whispers
as if their dark march could make us brothers.
--William Hathaway, The Gymnast of Inertia. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.
NOTE:
Yes, another villanelle.
Google and I couldn't find any websites worth the mention on William Hathaway (although a number on Shakespeare's sonnets, from the camp which backs Shakespeare's brother-in-law for the role of W.H. ... the things you find on the internet. *sigh*)
