A TRIO FROM '44
When in England many American visitors feel a odd sense of affinity with man sight, sounds and sensations which they have known partially and are seeing at first hand.
In September of the year 1944 rather dreary day an English person might have seen at the Bridge Westminster a bound note book in hand and stopping to write in at intervals. I was writing the following poem:
COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE
September
Could Wordsworth see his silent city now
Her sleep would seem - twice 'o'er -intense, profound.
The timeless Thames still speaks his weighty sound.
Beneath this span the Bank-bent depths endow
The night with motion. Staunch renewing vow -
This vein of England's seas doth now surround,
With blood of mighty men - the captives bound -
Past waves which wash not now Britannia's prow.
The ships, the domes, the towers and temples, too.
Open now to sea, to sky and air
This night are shrouded - a sullen, silent view
While fangs are bared in waiting, taut with care.
O Poet! We need thy voice upraised anew
To show the fighting Soul recumbent there!
Andrew McCaskey, London, Sept 1944
The another time,when we were biking eastward along the road leading us toward Great Yarmouth and "David Copperfield country". It was a bright, sun-spattering day and children were at play along the roadside. That day I met with this:
INCIDENT
"Look! A piece of flak! " she said
this little English child,
as if she'd touched a common stone,
and thought of other things.
"Flak?" asked and took the bit
of ragged metal in my hand.
"It's from the planes, you know," she said
and went about her play.
a.l.m. Gt. Yarmouth Road, Sept 1944
NIGHT FLIGHT
Yellowed fangs of flak stabbing
up into the belly of the night.
Big Dipper's cup abrim
with thunderous Death in flight.
green bits of Hell searing
scab-like in the sky.
And Dipper's ladle pouring
molten streams of steel awry.
Sept 1944 a.l.m Rackheath-Norfolk Country
All wars linger on forever, in seems, in our literature and music. The memories grow and may, in time, become weighty enough to make us seek a better way to live.
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 12-3-06 [c384wds]
