Once more the pre-dawn throbs on engine sound
Down coral slope, papaya grove, and pine,
Into the sea whose pastures girdle round
The native in his jungle, I in mine,
And you in yours, O gentle stay at home:
Your talons, too, have raked the living bone.
We waken, and the cities of our day
Move down a cross-haired bombsight in the mind.
The thoughtless led, those only in the way,
The powerful by intent, wake there and find
Their jungle closing; each man tangled tight
Upon this day that may not last till night.
Now I have named another year of time
Learning to count not mine but the world’s age.
And on the morning of no birth I climb
To sign in fire your and my heritage:
The bomb whose metal carcass, dressed and bled,
Is our day’s gift to populate the dead.
See from his living garden, damp with dawn,
The native turn from weeding as we pass
His centuries upon this flowering stone.
Our trucks arrived in clouds of dust and gas
Coat his green jungle till the daily rain.
He sees us past and turns to weed again.
His is the simplest darkness, our grotesque
Of straps and buckles, parachutes and guns,
Our gear of kit and cartridge, helmet, mask,
Life-vest, spare rations, and the elegance
Of all our conscious gestures and our gum,
Darken us further than his guess can come.
We leave his green past. On a metal din
Our gears resolve us from the valley night
To plateaus where the rapt emblazoned fin
Our perfect bomber lifts to the first light
Mounts on the air up which the mounting sun
Prophesies Asia and a death to come.
Already now, my dear, this turning sun
Has been your day and here returns to me
Where I inherit on a bomber’s run
Your image from the sun-dial of the sea.
I dream you smiling, waking fleshed with grace,
And, see, a gunsight photographs your face.
I cannot lose my darkness. Posed and dressed,
I touch the metal womb our day will ride.
We take our places till the switch is pressed
And sun and engines rise from the hillside,
A single motion and a single fire
To burn, return, and live upon desire.
Look at the sea and learn how malice shines
Bright as a noon come down through colored glass.
We are the soaring madness of our times
Marking our own flown never-ending loss;
The whitecaps strewn like lint on a stone floor
Wait, will swallow, close, and wait once more.
Now, westering, our day has named our course:
Far down, in frost and tiny symmetry,
Fuji, the magic mountain of what was,
Places our past on the trajectory
Of the cosined and wind-computed fall
Our bombs descend to save or kill us all.
What has been lost when once the bomb is flown?
(We fire at fighters and await the rose
Blossoming in fire upon the town
Whose living history we have come to close.)
The dead are not our loss. My memory is
Our simplest day was guiltier than this.
Our innocence shall haunt our murderous end
Longer than statues or the tabled walls
Alphabetized to death. Shall we pretend
Destruction moves us, or that death appals?
Are we the proud avengers time returned?
We danced past all the windows while time burned.
Now, our intention bloodied late by need,
We sit our jungles hemispheres apart;
I, blossomed awkwardly from dragon seed,
You, endlessly the pure and gentle heart,
And death runs loose like shadows in a wind
On all the reasoned motions of our mind.
And last, by dark, we have our rock again:
Our wheels touch and our waiting lives return
Far off the dead are lying in the rain,
And on their dark the ruined cities burn
Our jungles down with light enough to see
The last compassionate necessity.
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