Lines in Bivouac

THREE POEMS

LINES IN BIVOUAC

The hills hold us, cupped in a hand of earth;

the long hills stretching out, like an outstretched arm

at rest on the table of earth, the elbow a valley,

the pulse a drumbeat, hammering in the quarries,

their green hill-flesh huddling against the bone.

They hold our tents, pitched pygmy-like in their palms.

Not hostilely, knowing us. Knowing that we are earth

(we know ourselves for earth, we bear her semblances;

we wear the dust like a sister's kiss, we pluck the boughs,

calling ourselves the brothers of trees; we drink the hillstreams,

pressing against them.) Here in the warm contours,

in the shadow of the life-line, in the great hollow trough of the M

in the palm of the hill, we walk, we lie in dreams

wrapped round and sheltered from strange sounds surely

swept by the moon, that like a fresh-turned wake

of the sunship, silvers the young head of the captain

asleep on his arm, at rest on the arm of the hill here.

And only three man-made sounds hang in the darkness:

the boot on the stone, the sentry's shout and the silence:

itself a sound born in man's inner fastness,

compounded of all the words of talkative nature

breathed over by wind at night and rain's liberal river.

All nations speak the idiom of silence.

All nations gather this moment. Here in the hill's hand,

gathered ourselves by the space, we gather the moment,

striking its whiplash over the earth in spirals,

speaking the whistling speech of silence, connecting

friend with friend, enemy-host with enemy,

dead with the dead, living with living, but also

friend and foe, living and dead: this moment.

Under the captain's head lies his hand, the wrist down.

Into his wrist the sharp stone presses its finger.

Under the stone the worm is asleep in the wet eatth,

dreaming what dreams he draws from the streams of the mountain,

Come, dream out of the stream.

Dream, worm in the warm.

Stir, stone in the earth.

Wrist in the dust: throb.

Young Captain, wake; the eager moon

has fired and fled the sea,

left to our sight the wounds of night

in high trajectory,

sped from the sun that lonely gun:

day's hot artillery.

Wake, Captain, wake; sleep done, the dream is done.

All still unwon is still to win;

all still untaken, yours to take.

Break sleep, break bread and break the world,

flay foe, win all, save all, save us.

Break bread and slake the world's hunger.