WORLD WAR II

  

The names of states were carved in stone around

   The wall of the Memorial, where posed

Beneath each wreath old men in veteran’s caps

   Embroidered with the companies they served.

One struggled from a wheelchair parked beside

   The state of Maine and stood expectantly

Beneath that word, and someone who passed by

   Said blithely, “Well now, you must be from Maine!”

But one who might have been the soldier’s son

   Replied, “Not really; he’s from Illinois.

He don’t know what it says,” and guided him 

   With tenderness and patience to the state

Where he should pose. The crowd flowed slowly by,

   Like water from the bright Reflecting Pool.

UNITED STATES OF THE ANDROID

 

Through covetous America

Mechanically I wander,

Encoffined in a Dream of glass

And metal, rolling endlessly

Upon the asphalt-clotted stream

That covers up the ruined past.

 

The programs on my windshield bait 

My cravings to accelerate:

I yield unto the showman’s craft

That entertains percentages

And gluts my soul with images

That advertise the Golden Calf.

 

Whatever can be sold and bought

Is packaged to seduce my thoughts:

Arrested in the passing blur

Of pageantry that is sustained

Relentlessly, to numb life’s pain

By means of sweet commercial lure.

 

The captain of this craft am I,

And Freedom is my destiny.

Along these roads I sport and sing,

A representative of all

Who have exchanged their human flaws

For sinless cogs and wires and springs.

 

No need to mourn when I am dead:

The radio inside my head

Will guide me through that valley’s shade.

The wheels of Fate roll ever on;

As for this body, Science strong

Each dying organ shall replace

 

Until I have the jewel won,

And Nature I have overcome,

And artifice controls the void—

A brain of cybernetic lies,

Synapses all computerized:

United States of the Android.

 

AS A DAY IN JUNE

  

The head of a water snake

Bobs through his element,

His dark body oscillating

Underneath the waves.

 

Soon he writhes upon the shore,

Disappearing in the rushes

Gradually, as the river

Slithers from his sinuous form.

 

Meanwhile I stoop with pain

And stumble to my feet,

A paintbrush in my hand—

And wish I were as lithe as he.

 

But Kundalini takes the time

I need to keep my house repaired.

A serpent need not stain a deck

And sacrifice a day in June.

 

         TEMPORARY JOB

  

I rolled the little dog upon her back,

Her limp, sedated body spread to bare

Its vulnerable abdomen— nipples

Never to be suckled—while her head

Flopped over to one side, as though a truck

Had slammed her hard against a garbage can.

Upon the vet’s behest, I shone the light

And put the shiny scalpel to her flesh,

And sliced her down the middle as he watched

His new assistant learn to cut the tubes

And then remove the ovaries. The scene   

Was etched upon my mind against my will;

And my revulsion drew back from each stitch

That hid Man’s treachery from Man’s best friend—

Or so Man thought.

                                The whole world screamed at me

That I should get a job and earn my keep;

For high school was behind me at long last.

My father’s finger pointed at the door—

So here I was, among the working class.

 

The whole thing troubled me. It seemed that I

Was violated somehow, like that dog,

In being ripped untimely from the womb

Of literature and music, and cast out

Upon the streets of life where such as he,

This false friend of the animals, snipped tubes,

While boys like me were shipped to Vietnam—

Another place of gelding and betrayal.

 

I washed the kennels with a mop and hose,

And fed the cats and dogs, and picked up trash

About the parking lot. The whole thing stank.

I couldn’t wait until I turned eighteen,

So I could move to some romantic town

And start to live a life of Poetry.

I hardly knew myself at all.

                                             Three days

Did not go by before I spoke my mind,

And told the doctor that this kind of work

Was not for me; I couldn’t spay a dog—

It seemed against the nature of the world.

I half expected he would yell at me;

Instead he looked me sternly in the eye,

And not without an envious regard.

 

“You know,” he said, “although you are too young

To realize what it means, not everyone

Can say what you have said; can stand and face

The world because of what he thinks is right.

Of course, I don’t agree with you, and yet

There are not many people I have known

Whom I respect—and you are one of them.”

 

He shook my hand; I stammered disavowals.

“Goodbye,” he said sincerely, “and good luck.” 

 

Perplexed and grim, I stood awhile outside

And waited for my father to come by

And pick me up on his way home from work.

I dreaded telling him; and when I did,

He drove along in silent thought, and seemed

To know me better than I knew myself.

 

 

             A. H. WILSON

  

The Farmer is a lover of the Land;

No Farmer he who labors but for gain.

When all the cows are milked, and broken grain

Thrown to the chickens, and the peaches canned,

The fences mended, and the nude sheep stand

Relieved of their wool coats at chilly dawn,

His fancy is to plant a lily pond--

For more than just a Farmer is a Man.

He builds a tiny cabin at that place,

And sets beside it on the sandstone ledge

A painted laborer of fired clay,

Whose shadow will not scare goldfish away.

That all this work is good, he sits to judge

Upon his porch swing, at the close of day.

 

SPRING THAW

 Muddy frozen foot steps

Oozing between banks of snow

Winters recession

Like diseased gums drawn aside

Old teeth drop like icicles

 

IMAGINE: NO POSSESSIONS

 

 John Lennon should have sat down

and had a long talk with his Rolls Royce.

 

Saint John of the Cross once said

it matters not whether a sparrow is bound

by a cord or by a slender thread--

he is bound anyway.

 

I sit here in the house I supposedly own,

and imagine the possessionlessnesss of a Saint.

 

But the real bondage is that which flows from within,

to the six spheres of sense.

 

It is not the fault of the air

that it cannot be grasped by the clenched fist.

 

Every road has to begin somewhere.

Every destination was once only a Thought.

 

Let us realize at the outset

that there is not even Self to own,

and that a little leaven

will one day leaven the whole loaf.