War is Kind

But it is only a little ink more or less.

What?
You define me God with these trinkets?
Can my misery meal on an ordered walking
Of surpliced numskulls?
And a fanfare of lights?
Or even upon the measured pulpitings
Of the familiar false and true?
Is this God?
Where, then is hell?
Show me some bastard mushrooms
Sprung from a pollution of blood.
It is better.

Where is God?

“Have you ever made a just man?”
“Oh, I have made three,” answered
God,
“But two of them are dead,
“And the third—
“Listen! Listen!
“And you will hear the thud of his defeat.”

I explain the silvered passing of a ship
at night,
The sweep of each sad lost wave,
The dwindling boom of the steel thing's striving,
The little cry of a man to a man,
A shadow falling across the greyer night,
And the sinking of the small star;

Then the waste, the far waste of waters,
And the soft lashing of black waves
For long and in loneliness.

Remember, thou, O ship of love,
Thou leavest a far waste of waters,
And the soft lashing of black waves
For long and in loneliness.

“I have heard the sunset song of the
birches,
“A white melody in the silence,
“I have seen a quarrel of the pines.
“At nightfall
“The little grasses have rushed by me
“With the wind men.
“These things have I lived,” quoth the
maniac,
“Possessing only eyes and ears.
“But you—
“You don green spectacles before you look at roses.”

Fast rode the knight
With spurs, hot and reeking,
Ever waving an eager sword,
“To save my lady!”
Fast rode the knight,
And leaped from saddle to war.
Men of steel flickered and gleamed
Like riot of silver lights,
And the gold of the knight's good banner
Still waved on a castle wall.
.       .       .       .       .       .       .
A horse,
Blowing, staggering, bloody thing,
Forgotten at foot of castle wall.
A horse
Dead at foot of castle wall.

Forth went the candid man
And spoke freely to the wind—
When he looked about him he was in a far
strange country.

Forth went the candid man
And spoke freely to the stars—
Yellow light tore sight from his eye.

“My good fool,” said a learned bystander,
“Your operations are mad.”

“You are too candid,” cried the candid man.
And when his stick left the head of the
learned bystander
It was two sticks.

You tell me this is God?
I tell you this is a printed list,
A burning candle and an ass.

On the desert
A silence from the moon's deepest
valley.
Fire rays fall athwart the robes
Of hooded men, squat and dumb.
Before them, a woman
Moves to the blowing of shrill whistles