Christmas, 1943

Christmas, 1943

Being first a farmer in
The Great Depression,
He always hated Christmas,
No matter the
Endless cups of
Amnesiac cheer
A commercialized
Holiday offered.




And secondly why?

On Christmas Eve 1943,
a teenage sailor,
residue of hay bales still clinging to his ears,
dreaming of thistles and harvests,
horse-powered ploughing
in the middle of the South Pacific,
was still seasick when he
switched duties with his
best friend,

But on Christmas Day 1943
a teenage sailor met
a never-ending war

On Christmas Day 1943,
a teenager who rode
ponies to school
watched 108 of his comrades
kick and scream prematurely into
dark, wet un-holidayed sepulchers--
wailing armless torsos,
legless arm-flailing torsos,
always screaming, "don't leave me!";
swam instinctively against
the violent sucking black
hole

On Christmas Day 1943
War's cruel gift exchange.
God's inscrutable will.
The year without a Santa Claus

On Christmas Day, 1943
a pompous and derelict Captain
laughed at the alarms of his
subordinates--

Murder--

On Christmas Day, 1943,
surviving men lined up their shoes on deck,
insanely perfect, as their drills
had promised,
and leapt to their deaths

On Christmas Day,
a teenaged Veteran, father, husband
gives painful gifts to his wife
and his children;
refuses all presents,
refuses the waste,
refuses the universe,
and Memory,
all in vain, in vain

On Christmas Day, 1943
a teenage boy, a husband, a father
a Veteran,
was saved by a passing ship,
And lost his life,

On Christmas Day, 1943.

war poetry mental+illness christmas holidays

The Hour

By the fung-dappled stones

Two flies cavort

Above marrowless bones in their bliss

Through the soil slides the worm

Happy, hungry, then devoured,

When round earth

Opens mouth up above

And the hour gains its grains

And the sea immortal rains

And the jackalous earth is unsated

But the heart shrinks in horror at the earth, the sea, the hour

Falls to its knees and bays for our tombstone-earth-sea-hour.

Twilight at Hyeres

Twilight at Hyeres Beach

On Hyeres' twilight beach,
The hunted sun offers
a rose sky above
Hills veiled in a fine mist;
A miniature dog
barking at the small waves;
A blissful naked child
And his mother so full
Of an adult's envy
And parental love too,
Simultaneously;
Lovers who kiss without
Any embarassment
In the still warm waters;
A one-legged seagull;
And us eating well
And having a good time--
The sensation of a
Stolen eternity.