Short Poems

Clamber out of the morning river with water beads like fish eggs clung
to your pubis the calluses on your buttocks from sitting, writing
on flat rocks, your goose-pimpled thighs — the bumpy tongues of two dogs licking
each other — and river-slather and slather at the edge of my mouth.

You are smiling, straining out your hair, flicking your hands, and then
see me watching you with the cloth and pots I was taking to wash.
Before I have time to be embarrassed, the smile lifts into your eyes.

Zipping your skirt, you rustle past,
sand hissing through a glass,
with the Bedouin snap and flash
of static-electric
sparks disturbing fabric.
This morning"s charge could rouse
The Desert Fathers of Sinai
over which I drowse.

Four years have passed and it is winter again. Much has happened. When I last wrote, on the Somme in 1915, I was sickening with typhoid fever. All that spring I was in hospital.
Nevertheless, I was sufficiently recovered to take part in the Champagne battle in the fall of that year, and to — carry on — during the following winter. It was at Verdun I got my first wound.
In the spring of 1917 I again served with my Corps; but on the entry of the United States into the War I joined the army of my country. In the Argonne I had my left arm shot away.

Asking the Second Nun
about the cherry trees in full bloom
at the imperial palace.

Retiring from court
to a street of gossipy neighbors.

At dusk
gazing sideways at
the thin moon.

A man pulling the boat
in the mist — is he lame?

In a rice field
the Koman willow
dropping its leaves.

An empty house
the owners died of poverty.

A silhouette
in the early dawn cold
lighting a fire.