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- Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
- Path: sparky!uunet!spool.mu.edu!agate!ames!pacbell.com!att-out!cbfsb!cbnewsb.cb.att.com!ktw
- From: ktw@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (kenneth.t.wolman)
- Subject: The Wounds
- Message-ID: <1992Dec29.161726.12729@cbfsb.cb.att.com>
- Sender: news@cbfsb.cb.att.com
- Organization: AT&T
- Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 16:17:26 GMT
- Lines: 51
-
-
- THE WOUNDS
-
- In the heat of the battle, head to head,
- _Responsibility_ is but a word,
- and in the fierceness of the combat, in its passion,
- even the sound of beating hearts becomes one heart,
- and blood marries blood in the smoke, in the tears and cries
- of the fallen: blades flail, body counts are taken,
- but it is hard to tell who has made the wound:
- a friend, an enemy, even one's self.
-
- By fortune, by will, one escapes, a warrior
- drained almost to death by what has enthralled him:
- lies face-upward in the mud,
- peers face-upward at the stars,
- shrives himself, palms upward in surrender,
- and weeps,
- hearing only the beating of his solitary heart,
- separated in survival, torn from the hearts
- of friends, of enemies, he can no longer tell:
- knows only he will not die, but cannot fight again:
-
- feels the bleeding stop, the wounds begin to bind.
- And at the cold sunrise, stands shakily
- on new colt-legs,
- surveying the field where noncombatant hands,
- now finally seen,
- reach out toward him,
- where their voices, heard at last
- without the cries of the combatants,
- call out his name, claiming him for theirs.
- He kneels to place food in their hands,
- kisses on their mouths, his back
- turned from the salt-sown, bloody earth from which he rose.
-
- There will be time enough to sit with warriors grown old,
- but now is too soon, the wounds too fresh,
- he needs his heart's blood.
- They will tell tales of lessons learned,
- show the scars of battle,
- faded pale against the flesh.
-
- Perhaps they will laugh.
-
- Kenneth Wolman, December 29, 1992
- --
- Kenneth Wolman | To die of fear of revealing yourself
- AT&T Bell Laboratories | to the person who loves you is murder.
- (908)582-4815 |
- Kenneth.Wolman@att.com | --Stan Rice, "Anne's Curls"
-