Strength to War

Dear stranger, reading this small, true book

By a simple man who loved much and wasn't loved,

Merging your own life with the lines on this page,

Lines that remind you of some frightening shore,

Cold rains, shipwreck, and loud winds and waves,

Stirring your lonely mind with brutal images

That conjure loves forgotten, fears disclaimed,

Joining your pulse with mine, tasting my blood,

The salt, salt blood of a tortured, common man,

What can I say, stranger, what say of war

To limber fear-stiff fingers, give one strength

Against the exploding years, the enclosing dark?

It is indeed night and cold. Wind-blown mist

Spins from the river, shrouds valley and hill-top,

Binding my eyes. My post: three blocks in circuit.

My law: the safety of others: a guard's aim.

My boots make sounds in the gravel where I walk,

My rifle jiggles the shoulder gas mask binding,

My leggings rustle to unseen forest leaves.

But my pulse, too, strikes loud at my wakeful ears,

Loud as the irate colonel and the clamoring world,

And I think a soldier's thoughts of time foregone,

Of fervor of an apple branch in June,

And a lover's hand brushing my casual sleeve.

How kill the brown-haired image, how end the desperate need?

Who'll smirk at the eye clouded, the mouth shaken,

The gentle hand wavering at the gun?

Dear stranger, there is loss, forever loss,

And what we add to life we later subtract

In bitterness and age and friendlessness.

A man earns strength to war only by dying.

Source: Poetry (August 1943)