New at IWP Books: Leonard Bacon, 1943, Day of Fire.

Men and Poetry

Men write poetry,
 If they can.
Poetry! Poetry!
 What a thing is man,
Dreaming, scheming,
In the gloom or in the gleaming,
To find redeeming
 In a line’s thin span!

`A cry that echoes,
 An echo that cries,’
Takes him, wakes him
 To Paradise.
The strong verse, thundering
Through the brain blundering,
Sets him wondering,
 Unseals his eyes.

Wars bellow round him.
 They will blow by
And be forgotten
 Before the cry
Of a voice lifted
Over the rifted
Desert, sand-drifted,
 Where the bones are dry.

Evil Days

The field constricts,
 The view narrows.
Poor Hope conflicts
 With the slings and arrows.

The storm rises
 And overtakes.
The squall surprises,
 The wave breaks.

Ours is no light
 And healthy mood.
Old griefs bite.
 Sick thoughts intrude.

What we did ill
 Is written plain,
Against our will,
 Across the brain.

What we did well
 Can play no part
In the strange Hell
 Of the strange heart,

To itself a stranger,
 Staring with dim
Eyes at danger
 Beyond the rim

That all things known
 Obscurely girds
And will not own
 The rule of words.

Though Hell unchain
 The cataract,
Never complain!
 Act! Act! Act!

The Bulwarks Break

Now all the bulwarks sunder
 That stood so strong before.
We and our kind go under
 The slow wave of war.

We shall not judge all matters
 Henceforward from afar.
For now disaster batters
 At all we were and are.

The instant of decision
 Too openly has shown
The dullness of our vision,
 Our thought’s dim monotone.

The scheme of things that fitted
 Some pattern that we knew
Now proves device half-witted,
 Which we ourselves see through.

What if our every blunder
 Show clear in ghastly light?
Though all the bulwarks sunder,
 Now look alive and fight!

What Our Enemies Ignore

By force or indirection,
 In ignorance unchecked,
They seek their own subjection,
 Who labor to subject.

To the Huns and those who lead ’em
 This never has been known:
Only in others’ freedom
 Can nations find their own.

Zero-Hour

Now in the hour when our hopes tremble,
 When they whom we abhor decide,
It does not help us to dissemble,
 Though triumph be as yet denied.

Their conquest? In the end what victory
 Can crown a system and a plan,
In every aspect contradictory
 To the vision and the hope of man?

To every faith, to every dream,
 That moves sweet creatures young or old?
We must not pander to that scheme,
 Accept the domination cold

That palsies man into a type,
 A marionette in uniform,
Contented with a Sergeant’s stripe,
 And `kept mechanically warm.’

God send we keep ourselves as free
 As the great woods our fathers knew,
As waters of ‘the Ocean-Sea’
 Their crank blunt cock-boats blundered through.