(Belleau Wood, 1917)
“A soldier waits until he’s called—then
moves ass and balls up, over,
tearing twigs and crushed faces,
swinging his bayonet like a pitchfork
and thinking anything’s better
than a trench, ratshit
and the tender hairs of chickweed.
A soldier is smoke
waiting for wind; he’s a long corridor
clanging to the back of a house
where a child sings
in its ruined nursery…
and Beauty is the
gleam of my eye on this gunstock and my spit
drying on the blade of this knife
before it warms itself in the gut of a Kraut.
Mother, forgive me. Hear the leaves? I am
already memory.”
Alfonzo Prepares to Go Over the Top, Rita Dove
