HARVEST OF THOSE / image by Amalie Flynn

PUTTTI don’t know whether war is an interlude
PUTTTduring peace, or peace an interlude during war.
PUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT-French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, 1919

Hurl of metal – iron, steel – as shrapnel,
as bail hail, as HE detonation, all
forged and spit out again with new fire,
matériel barrae, meat-mincer for
extruding the mortal mettle of mere men.
The sowing and the reaping are all one –
short is the harvest of those born to it.
After the wrecking, reaping, reckoning,
all are scuppered on the killing field,
khaki men with hopes of home snuffed out.
Sheaves of men scythed down mid the muck-mire-mud,
bowels churned with the disemboweled earth, red wet.
Gravity flows to the lowest reach, but not
here in the gorge of this blood-gutted earth,
saturated but not satiated.
On and on this crimson stain will drain,
young men will come to fill the gap – futile
like a record where the sylus is stuck
in the groove over and over again –
out of trenches to fatal, final ground.
They die individuals, but banal
as communally their yield is too large –
none a hero in this no-winners game
nor a tragedy – just raw statistics.
All that grieve them soon too, to oblivion.
After this Great War comes the entr’acte
before World War roman numeral II,
just in time for those who survived and bred
to lose their sons in the next harvesting.
Never an end, merely an ellipsis …

Liked it? Take a second to support Wrath-Bearing Tree on Patreon!

David Burr

David Stanford Burr authored Ledger Domain (poems) (New York Quarterly Books, 2019), The Poet’s Notebook: Inspiration Techniques, and Advice on Craft (Running Press 2000), and was the selection editor of seven hardcover poetry anthologies. He taught at New York University as an adjunct associate professor leading poetry workshops for twenty-five years, was a managing editor at Macmillan Publishers for thirty-six years, and has edited 296 poetry books, including the last sixteen Best American Poetry series annuals. He has a second MS making the contest rounds. His current project is a collection of his own World War I poems from the perspective of the British Expeditionary Force in the trenches on the Western Front. https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/david_stanford_burr