War

Did you live thus before the War

Through Peace's infancy, who came of age

To die? My homing pigeons in their cage

Peck at the wicker door,

Strut, quiver their wings. Go fly my dove,

Who never dallied yet,

Through fogs of forty years to lawns where summer set

And children watched the dove-cote shadows move

Before the war, before.

Give us the other years of peace

When red and black fought square by square and all

The narrow allies crackled and the dale

Here rained black manna. Grace

Hid in the bottom drawer. There was no more.

All else is what was lost

And sought by us in anguish, sought with guilty haste

In vain. That we were waiting for the war

Was written on our face.

Desperate indeed, pre-damned by the event

You took the cards and gambled on the red?

We gathered up the cards as you have said

And while the armies went

Rumbling by, we played at vingt-et-un

Judge if you like, but we

Wept for a cardboard king. I find it hard to see

Now to what cryptic plan the cards refer

Or what the stakes then meant.

Did you live thus before the War.

Through peace's infancy?

Infants

Infants

Infants

Infants