Читать книгу The City, Our City - Wayne Miller - Страница 10

III

] and all wes then cleare, some faces

hath shadowes in them. Mister Preacher

marke the doores with crosses,

and ere long there is no winde in me

to stand on. Blesse us Lorde

with soupe and wine, bread and water

till we dye. And blesse Katheryn

with her long thin handes. You I saw

sucking the wordes from her mouth,

the light from her skin [

A HISTORY OF WAR

The fields buckled into earthworks,

breastworks, and the men dug deeper

into their ground. Of course, once

the trenches were cut, they could not

be moved—so the men adorned

the bunkers with card tables, slicked

the walls with posters, poured rum

into mugs they’d brought in from town.

Each morning, they stood-to, glared

down their rifles, through the nets

of barbed wire, the craters and corpses,

the litter of branches, footprints

and shells. Across the way, bayonets

just like theirs aimed back, as if

the parados propped mirrors, as if

their own blackened faces were hard

set against them. Over there, just

as here, the color guard raised the flag,

the captains sloganeered through

their bullhorns. Everyone could hear

the echoing, and everyone roared

and shouted—because such words

were the river that carried them deeper,

that kept them from sinking.

Then, as was the ritual, at nine,

the men climbed down from the firestep,

shot craps on the duckboards, read

treatises in the dugouts on passion

and Passchendaele. Anything to kill

the time between assaults, to black out