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Virgil watched them Crossing the river away from him The fathers without their children Only a little while Was he smiling -Ly -Ily At Death the Golden Age Falling backwards In the Chinese restaurant The tiniest fireman I could see that he was smiling Plenty of children in Arcady without fathers Our friends long before sundown
Copyright © 2002 by Donald Revell. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved.
They all wore little hats Vermont that I Can see, the river its coronet Of yellow beetles—crawling, Flying—the flowers wearing The river for a hat. I can see that When I stand alone Upon this acre as now Sober and living, the same, the same. They wore: Hats. They are not dead, John and Johnny and John, Which is a fine name for a river, Only gone. Having death out of the way, The ill-fitting suicide discarded, Pajama-like, on imaginary sand: Good, good. We stand.
A jet of mere phantom Is a brook, as the land around Turns rocky and hollow. Those airplane sounds Are the drowning of bicyclists. Leaping, a bridesmaid leaps. You asked for my autobiography. Imagine the greeny clicking sound Of hummingbirds in a dry wood, And there you’d have it. Other birds Pour over the walls now. I'd never suspected: every day, Although the nation is done for, I find new flowers.
It doesn't matter A damn what's playing— In the dead of winter You go, days of 1978 - 79, and we went Because the soldiers were beautiful And doomed as Asian jungles Kept afire Christ-like In the hopeless war I did not go to in the end Because it ended. The 20th-century? It was a war Between peasants on the one side, Hallucinations on the other. A peasant is a fire that burns But is not consumed. His movie never ends. It will be beautiful Every winter of our lives, my love, As Christ crushes fire into his wounds And the wounds are a jungle. Equally, no matter when their movies end, Hal