Edward Hirsch, 'Lay Back The Darkness'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Lay Back The Darkness

My father in the night shuffling from room to room
on an obscure mission through the hallway.

Help me, spirits, to penetrate his dream
and ease his restless passage.

Lay back the darkness for a salesman
who could charm everything but the shadows,

an immigrant who stands on the threshold
of a vast night

without his walker or his cane
and cannot remember what he meant to say,

though his right arm is raised, as if in prophecy,
while his left shakes uselessly in warning.

My father in the night shuffling from room to room
is no longer a father or a husband or a son,

but a boy standing on the edge of a forest
listening to the distant cry of wolves,

to wild dogs,
to primitive wingbeats shuddering in the treetops.

by Edward Hirsch

Nicola Knox, 'Who's For War?'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Who's For War?

So grey, those ancients,
in love
with bands and bugles
flags, epaulets, saluting
as the young march to death.
By all rhyme and reason
it’s these hoary old fellows
should be first into war
having so brief a lease to run
should fill up the last of life
with blood, the clang and shriek
of battles they insist upon
crying: who is not for us, against us!
Is it fit that flowers are plucked
while scarcely in bud, songs halted
at first note. Nature orders
each spring day shall grow longer
not shorter, towards summer.
No!
Let the withered gallants go
and for them the honour
of flag shrouds, the slow drum-beat
the bugle that plays in evening light
sons and daughters left to consider
the sorry foolishness of fathers.

by Nicola Knox