To Pearson

You'd never in a million years have guessed

Hero Pearson wrote fatuous verses to the stars,

And-tall, generous, brooding, loving, clumsy-

Laughed, and made them paper balls to pitch.

Once, on a tender spring-night campus walk,

He archly tried to mortify me, saying:

Come the Revolution and the first

They ought to kill off are the poets!

Yet Pearson wrote them, and some, I know, he saved,

(Though none very good)

And the day from 20,000 feet he dove

A flak-shocked SBD ablaze against

The turquoise shoals some yards off Peleliu,

They opened up a cardboard box and found

"To Mother," "To Ann," "To Death."