Warrior No More
Was that the trumpet sounding now?
Far off amidst the tree line evergreen with pines?
Whose trumpet sounded down from that high hill
Haloed with hazy sun, white and thick, a milky sun,
Yellow tinged, an egg yolk sun — still cooking?
Follow suit, they lay their arms down, hilts to ground.
Bloody steel, wet and bright in morose view,
Rusty edged from the history of the hammer beat
The forge which forced the fights to come,
The battered shield beat hard to form, then beat to formlessness.
He wipes the sweat, the blood, the dirt, from his forehead with his arm,
His bloody arm, cut deep, cut hard, the gash black now with grime and soot,
The smoke rolling now around his ankles like a Miltonian snake,
It settles in the creases and scars along the battlefield.
It has left its mark in soot upon their weary brows,
It settles in the creases and scars in their faces.
They look across the filthy fields, now full up with their dead.
Bloated corpses, white and empty, ash-like ghosts skin deformed,
Mouths agog, lips pursed and cracked, half-hung slackened jaws,
Wide eyes black, closed eyes sleeping, an eye still catching at the light of the failing day.
They breathe heavy but not deep, they exhale their anger and their evils.
Let it be that they get rid of that filth with which they’ve pent themselves up with,
Like a defiled fortress, traitor-filled, they’ve barred up bad blood, bad breath inside,
And now it bursts forth expelled, driven out? Or conquering and free?
His body is bent, supplicant to everything: the force of nature, the trappings of man,
The strength of the foe, the demands of the shield, and the will of God.
And sorrow. Do not forget sorrow. Supplicant to all this
And their minds haunted by the past and future, the two creeping along
The edges of the mind, settling into pools thick, glutinous and viscous, inescapable.
From one to the other they look, and to him all their eyes are grey.
Do they run? Do they fight? Upon the ground lay their blades, dulled and sullen.
His hands are slack, clammy, crusted thick with all things:
It does not wish to hold that hilt again.
His bloody arm throbs tight with nerves at the thought of a shield laid across it.
And his aching chest says let a blow come then and open up a wound to let me free.
My soul is trapped within this wreckage, this fallow soil of a heart, this shell empty.
Or let the trumpet sound and call and I will come.
I will lay down this shield and sword and I will come to they who call.
And there I’ll lay.