Saipan
Tibia, tarsal, skull, and shin:
Bones come out where the guns go in.
Hermit crabs like fleas in armor
Crawl the coral-pock, a tremor
Moves the sea, and surf falls cold
Or comes where glutton rats grow bold.
In the brine of sea and weather
Shredded flesh transfers to leather,
And the wind and sea invade
The rock-smudge that the flamethrowers made.
Death is lastly a debris
Folding on the folding sea:
Blankets, boxes, belts, and bones,
And a jelly on the stones.
What the body taught the mind
Flies explore and do not find.
Here the certain stood to die
Passionately to prove a lie.
At the end a covenant’s pall
Of stones made solid, palpable,
Moves the victory to the sea,
And the wind indifferently.
Hate is nothing, pity less.
Angers lead us to digress:
I shall murder if I can.
Spill the jellies of a man.
Or be luckless and be spilled
In the wreck of those killed.
Nothing modifies our end:
Nothing in the ruin will mend.
If I moralize, forgive:
Error is the day we live.
In the ammoniac caves of death
I am choked for living breath.
I am tired of thinking guns,
Knowing where the bullet runs.
I am dreaming of a kiss
And a flesh more whole than this.
I am pondering a root
To destroy the cave-rat’s loot.
I am measuring a place
For the living’s living grace.
I am running from the breath
Of the vaporing caves of death.
I have seen our failure in
Tibia, tarsal, skull, and shin.
December 16, 1944
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