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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE NOTHING REDEMPTION, by BRUCE WEIGL Poet's Biography First Line: Some men's voices rose and fell far away Subject(s): Army Life; Drills & Minor Tactics | |||
Some men's voices rose and fell far away. Time changed. Time got stupid and I stood in line with the gobs, our drawers at our feet so our cheeks we could pull apart. One boy's hole was plastered closed with his own dried months of shit, and the doctor called a second doctor in and the sergeants arrived feigning aimlessness. Oh la the boy sang to the doctors who giggled like men when they dreamed about war. I could not imagine that a man would shit himself and let his own shit dry himself closed. I didn't know you could do that so they would not take you into the state; So they would not make you cross through that door of lies into the greenery's mist. All night that night I rode out on a slow train with my cousin, and drunk, I pissed from the upper birth down onto him passed out in the birth below. He never woke up but I thought I should wash him soapy clean for the killing that I didn't know waited for us like a bloody handkerchief, snagged in the bushes, found by the beast who joins in the search for the slaughtered. First published in The Kenyon Review, Volume 22, #1, Winter 2000. www.kenyonreview.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...NIGHT PIECE FOR MY TWENTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY by JOHN CIARDI VISIBILITY ZERO by JOHN CIARDI GOOD-BYE, WENDOVER; GOOD-BYE, MOUNTAIN HOME by RANDALL JARRELL SOLDIER (T.P.) by RANDALL JARRELL TRANSIENT BARRACKS by RANDALL JARRELL MONDAY MORNING REVEILLE by JOHN CIARDI WE CAN'T WRITE OURSELVES INTO ETERNAL LIFE by DAVID IGNATOW |
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