The May Poets
“In Great Britain, which lost may [sic] poets to the first World War …”
–Helen Vendler, The Poetry of Our World
The May poets were brave, but also very stupid.
Convinced they were as invincible as they were handsome,
They stood up in the trenches and hurled grenades and clever insults
At the Bosch. They were no match for German machine guns.
The June poets hated war. In the midst of battle
They were often distracted and lost in reverie.
They preferred remembering lovely
Days on the Cherwell listening to the water lap
Against the sides of wooden boats. They missed sandwiches.
They breathed in poison gas as if it came from Hyacinths.
The July poets were angry and cruel. They loved the sight of blood.
They rushed machine nests eager for hand-to-hand combat.
The Germans hated them for their cruelty. They never took prisoners.
July poets were particularly skilled with bayonets.
They claimed they were mightier than any pen.
The August poets were officers. They loved to plan attacks
in cafés in towns like Amiens.
They seldom traveled to the front. Instead, they drew ingenious battle plans
on tablecloths they signed with their pen names.
They often quoted Caesar & Scipio on war.
They wore fine wool coats and drank Armagnac.
They sent the tablecloths to their lovers as souvenirs.
The troops never got to see them.
The September, October and November poets were enlisted men
Who sang to each other from trench to trench across the breadth of France.
Even the Germans stopped to listen.
Some even cried when they heard a thousand voices sing:
“O Lord, what is this worldys bliss,
That changeth as the moon!
My summer’s day in lusty May
Is darked before the noon.”
These autumn poets did not like the army. They died in great numbers.
The December poets were cowards.
They hid under the bodies of June poets
until the ambulances arrived. No one remembers them.
The January poets believed in reincarnation so they were fearless.
They threw their bodies on barbed wire and dropped grenades into the turrets of tanks.
They dared snipers to shoot them. In the evening they imagined a grand new life
And hoped to find it on the battlefield in the morning.
But as far as we know none ever did.
The February poets wished they were flyers. They loved saying “Sopwith-Camel.”
They all agreed that a Zeppelin was more beautiful than the Apollo Belvedere.
They were often shot in the back as they looked up at the sky.
The March poets were good and loyal soldiers. They followed orders without question.
When they were ordered to fight to the last man, they often did.
Generally, they were happy despite the conditions in the trenches.
When the war ended, they were a little sad and wrote many elegies.
The April poets did nothing much.
They marched from Calais to Boulogne and back again. Many times.
Not one died in the war. They loved their uniforms. And flags.
The women of France liked them best. And they had the most time to write.
* * * * *
Wigilia (Christmas Eve) on East Meadow in Dublin
— In memory of my mother and Honey and Dede
There was a distillery around the corner right on the canal.
It used to send a sweet essence of whiskey high over the neighborhood.
It helped dilute the acrid air from junkyards, smokestacks, barges and stockyards.
But the three of us still tried to keep from breathing as we left the car.
Inside there was a new mix of aromas that didn’t thrill us either — too young
to understand the obligations of a fast day we wanted meat — instead we faced a feast of fish:
Śledzie, baked stuffed bluefish, fried eel and flounder, cold shrimp, tiny smelts,
and Mom’s dark, earthy Christmas kapusta and what seemed like dozens of other vegetables
— none of which we liked — none of which we appreciated until much later,
when we were able to tell the three sisters
how much we loved remembering food we didn’t like to eat
how much we loved remembering how much they loved filling a table with food for all of us.