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How to Kill
Under the parabola of a ball,
a child turning into a man,
I looked into the air too long.
The ball fell in my hand, it sang
in the closed fist: Open Open
Behold a gift designed to kill.
Now in my dial of glass appears
the soldier who is going to die.
He smiles, and moves about in ways
his mother knows, habits of his.
The wires touch his face: I cry
NOW. Death, like a familiar, hears
and look, has made a man of dust
of a man of flesh. This sorcery
I do. Being damned, I am amused
to see the centre of love diffused
and the wave of love travel into vacancy.
How easy it is to make a ghost.
The weightless mosquito touches
her tiny shadow on the stone,
and with how like, how infinite
a lightness, man and shadow meet.
They fuse. A shadow is a man
when the mosquito death approaches.
Keith Douglas
(1920 – 1944)
How to Kill
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More in: Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Douglas, Keith, WAR & PEACE
Much Madness is divinest Sense
Much Madness is divinest Sense
To a discerning Eye –
Much Sense – the starkest Madness –
’Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail –
Assent – and you are sane –
Demur – you’re straightway dangerous –
And handled with a Chain –
Emily Dickinson
(1830-1886)
Much Madness is divinest Sense
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More in: Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Dickinson, Emily
Death
A spirit sped
Through spaces of night;
And as he sped, he called,
“God! God!”
He went through valleys
Of black death-slime,
Ever calling,
“God! God!”
Their echoes
From crevice and cavern
Mocked him:
“God! God! God!”
Fleetly into the plains of space
He went, ever calling,
“God! God!”
Eventually, then, he screamed,
Mad in denial,
“Ah, there is no God!”
A swift hand,
A sword from the sky,
Smote him,
And he was dead.
Stephen Crane
(1871 – 1900)
Death. A spirit sped
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More in: *War Poetry Archive, Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Stephen Crane
Song:
Sweetest love, I do not go
Sweetest love, I do not go,
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for me;
But since that I
Must die at last, ’tis best
To use myself in jest
Thus by feign’d deaths to die.
Yesternight the sun went hence,
And yet is here today;
He hath no desire nor sense,
Nor half so short a way:
Then fear not me,
But believe that I shall make
Speedier journeys, since I take
More wings and spurs than he.
O how feeble is man’s power,
That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
Nor a lost hour recall!
But come bad chance,
And we join to’it our strength,
And we teach it art and length,
Itself o’er us to’advance.
When thou sigh’st, thou sigh’st not wind,
But sigh’st my soul away;
When thou weep’st, unkindly kind,
My life’s blood doth decay.
It cannot be
That thou lov’st me, as thou say’st,
If in thine my life thou waste,
That art the best of me.
Let not thy divining heart
Forethink me any ill;
Destiny may take thy part,
And may thy fears fulfil;
But think that we
Are but turn’d aside to sleep;
They who one another keep
Alive, ne’er parted be.
John Donne
(1572–1631)
Song: Sweetest love, I do not go
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More in: Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Donne, John
Woman’s Constancy
Now thou has loved me one whole day,
Tomorrow when you leav’st, what wilt thou say?
Wilt thou then antedate some new-made vow?
Or say that now
We are not just those persons which we were?
Or, that oaths made in reverential fear
Of Love, and his wrath, any may forswear?
Or, as true deaths true marriages untie,
So lovers’ contracts, images of those,
Bind but till sleep, death’s image, them unloose?
Or, your own end to justify,
For having purposed change and falsehood, you
Can have no way but falsehood to be true?
Vain lunatic, against these ‘scapes I could
Dispute and conquer, if I would,
Which I abstain to do,
For by tomorrow, I may think so too.
John Donne
(1572–1631)
Woman’s Constancy
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More in: Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Donne, John
I Sought the Wood in Winter
I sought the wood in summer
When every twig was green;
The rudest boughs were tender,
And buds were pink between.
Light-fingered aspens trembled
In fitful sun and shade,
And daffodils were golden
In every starry glade.
The brook sang like a robin—
My hand could check him where
The lissome maiden willows
Shook out their yellow hair.
“How frail a thing is Beauty,”
I said, “when every breath
She gives the vagrant summer
But swifter woos her death.
For this the star dust troubles,
For this have ages rolled:
To deck the wood for bridal
And slay her with the cold.”
I sought the wood in winter
When every leaf was dead;
Behind the wind-whipped branches
The winter sun set red.
The coldest star was rising
To greet that bitter air,
The oaks were writhen giants;
Nor bud nor bloom was there.
The birches, white and slender,
In deathless marble stood,
The brook, a white immortal,
Slept silent in the wood.
“How sure a thing is Beauty,”
I cried. “No bolt can slay,
No wave nor shock despoil her,
No ravishers dismay.
Her warriors are the angels
That cherish from afar,
Her warders people Heaven
And watch from every star.
The granite hills are slighter,
The sea more like to fail;
Behind the rose the planet,
The Law behind the veil.”
Willa Cather
(1873 – 1947)
I Sought the Wood in Winter
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: # Classic Poetry Archive, 4SEASONS#Winter, Archive C-D, Archive C-D
Les quatre saisons – L’hiver
C’est l’hiver. Le charbon de terre
Flambe en ma chambre solitaire.
La neige tombe sur les toits.
Blanche ! Oh, ses beaux seins blancs et froids!
Même sillage aux cheminées
Qu’en ses tresses disséminées.
Au bal, chacun jette, poli,
Les mots féroces de l’oubli,
L’eau qui chantait s’est prise en glace,
Amour, quel ennui te remplace!
Charles Cros
(1842 – 1888)
Les quatre saisons – L’hiver
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: 4SEASONS#Winter, Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Cros, Charles
Vergissmeinnicht
(Forget-me-not))
Three weeks gone and the combatants gone
returning over the nightmare ground
we found the place again, and found
the soldier sprawling in the sun.
The frowning barrel of his gun
overshadowing. As we came on
that day, he hit my tank with one
like the entry of a demon.
Look. Here in the gunpit spoil
the dishonoured picture of his girl
who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht.
in a copybook gothic script.
We see him almost with content,
abased, and seeming to have paid
and mocked at by his own equipment
that’s hard and good when he’s decayed.
But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move;
the dust upon the paper eye
and the burst stomach like a cave.
For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.
Keith Douglas
(1920 – 1944)
Vergissmeinnicht (Forget-me-not)
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Douglas, Keith, WAR & PEACE
No Man Is an Island
No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were.
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
John Donne
(1572–1631)
No Man Is an Island
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Donne, John
I saw a man
pursuing the horizon
I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
“It is futile,” I said,
“You can never —”
“You lie,” he cried,
And ran on.
Stephen Crane
(1871 – 1900)
I saw a man pursuing the horizon
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: *War Poetry Archive, Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Stephen Crane
A Burnt Ship
Out of a fired ship, which by no way
But drowning could be rescued from the flame,
Some men leap’d forth, and ever as they came
Near the foes’ ships, did by their shot decay;
So all were lost, which in the ship were found,
They in the sea being burnt, they in the burnt ship drown’d.
John Donne
(1572–1631)
A Burnt Ship
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Donne, John
Simplify Me When I’m Dead
Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I’m dead.
As the processes of earth
strip off the colour of the skin:
take the brown hair and blue eye
and leave me simpler than at birth,
when hairless I came howling in
as the moon entered the cold sky.
Of my skeleton perhaps,
so stripped, a learned man will say
“He was of such a type and intelligence,” no more.
Thus when in a year collapse
particular memories, you may
deduce, from the long pain I bore
the opinions I held, who was my foe
and what I left, even my appearance
but incidents will be no guide.
Time’s wrong-way telescope will show
a minute man ten years hence
and by distance simplified.
Through that lens see if I seem
substance or nothing: of the world
deserving mention or charitable oblivion,
not by momentary spleen
or love into decision hurled,
leisurely arrive at an opinion.
Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I’m dead.
Keith Douglas
(1920 – 1944)
Simplify Me When I’m Dead
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Douglas, Keith, WAR & PEACE
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