Appetite (14)

Unable to get old bones contented
in the love seat, he frets rugwear, rescues
his coffee off low heat,
and, having heard as much, invites them
each to his surroundings, shoulders
stooped with battlegear, and arches spent
pressing ahead behind the tank corps,
as ready as any he believes, putting their wars behind
with speed-tracks or revivals,
with uniforms in case, with weekends out
or weekends under their jalopies.
As ready as any he believes, for dream-lives
or time-trials, finding their summers
leisurely, swimsuits daring men to share
the bright shades of the beachtowels,
easing the men from dreams that scream 3-D
and running colors.
Hadn't we, trailing the tanks, half-tracks,
freed more than we could bear,
and brought away more ruin than we had counted on,
hearing the horrors voiced
in prisoner exchanges, interred, broken alive,
and spoken to shames before tribunals,
heard and overheard, that thumping of sea-cannons
bruising air and sentience?  Prints,
he thinks, where the heart's tried.  And
centers, spun about by the perspective,
as if the sketch that seemed a way of saying it,
bringing as many back, were now
another species of avoidance, a whispering
or wilder gravity found out, haunting
this rising company, feeling their ways in him,
their power-thrusts and tightly-drawn combat,
sparing their own blooded hides
for understanding anything, and this smiling
afterward, adventures, rounded away
and done, set in these faces wild men put on
for christenings, leading their daughters
from half-names decades of English
made for them. 

 

© Robert Lietz