" To George Trakl, 1914 "
Never mind the deserters hung
like purple fruit outside the barn
where you medicate dying soldiers.
Never mind the gun ticking
in your pocket like a clock.
I come to offer you sleep
as the howitzers’ rumble
like heat lightning on the horizon
and mustard gas liquefies the lungs
of patients who will be arriving tonight.
Already, you can hear their screams
ring out like gunshots in your temples
telling you— you can’t save them all.
You can’t save them all.
Hell, you can’t even save yourself
with this exorcism of poems
you labor over each night.
Understand, I don’t care what you did
with your sister in the curtained
rooms and walled gardens of Salzburg.
I don’t care if it was consensual
or what drugs you now take to fight the shame.
I just want a drink of Mosel
to wash the road-dust from my mouth.
I just want to touch your drunken face
for one last time in the café light,
in the shade of this black oak
that will become your coffin.
Wittgenstein is three days away
from buying your way out of this god awful army
and still you can’t hold yourself together.
You can’t even keep your hands
from bursting into flame.
Never mind that gun ticking in your pocket.
Never mind the soldiers
creaking on their ropes in the wind.
Take my heart’s dark spider
with its sack of white poison.
Inhale this cocaine of sleep
so I can taste your blood forever
in the bitter pieces of apple
sliced by my knife.
© 2003 Jim Doss
|
|
