5076. IN A RUMMELSTEIN WAY

IN A RUMMELSTEIN WAY

(love is)

'A man of mine lies on the wire, and he will rot,

and first his lips the worms will eat.' Tears are in

the mud oasis tonight : ten men and more are dead

as bloated corpses floating on a wartime lake of blood.

Fire and vengeance, each with no meaning, have taken

now this field and the battle along with it. We die, of

course, in vain, for nothing can stanch this flow.

-

'For death was young again; the patron alone of

healthy dying, premature fate-spasm.' And all the

rest of that which mocks the living : a graveyard

full of lice and maggots; a face disemboweled

both by fear and death; left for itself to rot

and fester on a field still filled with blood.

-

I look now, less askance, at this portrait of two :

the in-love flailing of legs and arms, the deep,

soulful look of eyes and eyes, staring to

peer, deep within each living other.