While We Slept

At four in the morning the smoke of the forded river,

A screen of leaves, and the best of a nervous generation

cleverly trained and bombed and dying forever.

While we slept in the tangled womb, we were armed and counted;

later as a child among people more sad and powerful,

we delighted in stars while graves were being planted.

Growing up, swimming, feeling the mind grow harder

beside the brilliant lakes, the sunlight between wars, -

our innocent names were figured in plans of murder.

Cool statesmen flying above our fears, protracted

crisis on crisis, till we cried to fire,-

unknown which way their promise of death was directed.

Autumn maneuvers and the praised betrayal,

September when we loved as in a burning house,

while ranks of metal were rolling to their empty trial.

Feeding us nitrate, but keeping the useful reflex,

our lungs on file and our probable loss discounted,

they will call us to lie awake in their deathly barracks.

Say no to the heroine, to the guilty sense of outrage

no, to the priest of immaculate nails, say no, no

to the name-bands massed, and the wet thrills of public courage.

Refuse their glory and their indignation,

their empire and their monument of the exploding plane

defending the free routes of the profitable ocean!

Our freedom is simpler: white hills, and weather uncertain,

our presence unmarked on official maps, and naked

embracing in the afternoon room with the rainy curtain.

If this be treason now, and our poems imprisoned,

our nerves and weapons given triggers of despair,

then, let our thoughts be deadly, our deaths be reasoned:

Defending not what we have, the kindly fortune,

the research of years in diseases of poverty,

the islands, the gold at Fort Knox, and the English porcelain,

But fighting for what we have not, and equal to suffer

wounds consciously in desire of life, of sun

universal, and the abolition of the poor.