New View

El Agheila, a pin-dot on our personal map,

Is close in its strangeness as Hollins Street or Park,

Now that P-40 bomber pilots have poured

Our household grease from hurry-rack on troops

And transports, unreal as a cameleer's mirage-

Unreal as death: unreal as diving low

Through Saturday-rain to fire at Axis dumps-

Unreal as the speed John Gilbertson had craved

Before the Axis brand of speed was loosed

Against the bull's-eye of our indolence.

El Agheila. Streets prepared with booby-traps

For sappers to find in a desperate hide-and-go-seek.

Bottled bombs or a muddy pathway mined.

Comic-strip humor: "Enemy over this ridge"-

A come-on from the quarry: a stone from the Madison gang.

El Agheila takes its place in the whole as Maple Street or Vine.

Mary Owings Milles