Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE BATTLEFIELDS, by MAX EASTMAN


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE BATTLEFIELDS, by                    
First Line: You never saw the summer dance and sing
Last Line: Slave to no thought softer than her own.
Subject(s): Fields; War; Pastures; Meadows; Leas


You never saw the Summer dance and sing
And wreathe her steps with laughter, toss her larks,
And strew her crimson poppies, and make rise
Across the meadows in her train a cry
Of happy colors -- O you never knew
How birds can make a business of their singing,
How the golden music can rain down
From sunny heaven like a hail-storm all
Day long -- you never saw the naked life
Of Summer, till you saw her in her wrath
And gladness, young-eyed, golden-irised, loud
And wild and lovely-drunken, running, prancing,
Clambering across these fields of death.

Old pits and craters where the solid earth
Rocked up and smoked like water, are the beds
Of blowing lillies; huge dull-yellowing piles
Of steel, the dead-ends of the work of death,
Are choirs for thrushes and gay trellises
For rose and morning-glory; and you see
The tissue petals trailing down the holes
Men huddled in to die like driven rats.

You see black crazy strings of barbed-wire fences
Legging down the hillside like old men
Amuck, tripped up and clambered on and loved
Down into earth by mountains of wild-grape
And ivy. And you see old obscene tanks,
Gigantic bugs without antennae, bugs
Named Lottie, and named Liesel, cracked and blasted,
Pouring out their iron guts among
The daisies, and you see the daisies laugh;
And long-tailed pies that fly like aeroplanes
Float from their turrets, gentle in the blue.
Whole cities were sowed in this earth like seed.
The wealth and eagerness of all mankind
Was here, like mountain thunder, coursing through
These ghostly paths, that hie so privately
Beneath the glossy crowds of bee-loved clover.
They were here for murder, death-determined.
But the shepherd trails his willing sheep
To crop that clover; and the clicking hoe
And sliding shovel talk as surely forth
As crickets when a summer storm is past.

These villages, close-nesting like the hives
Of bees, were crushed to blood and powder by
The speeding hoof of war. Their temples fallen
And their homes a pit for gravel, they,
The many neighbors, are a lonely few
Lost pioneers. But they have pitched their tents
And tacked their paper shanties in the desert,
And the hens are clucking, and the beans
Are blossoming with white and brick-red blossoms,
And the vine, the purple clematis,
Is royal at the door. On holidays
They lay their tools down, and with sunny wine
From the old cellar-pits, and kindling mirth
From depths incredible, they eat their bread
In laughter, they fling jokes at the old war,
And pour soup in the bugle, and sing loud,
And pound the drum, and call out all the girls,
And march, and dance, and fill the darkened streets
With love and music till the moon goes out.

In all death's garden but one plot is dead,
One cold bleak acre swept-up for our tears,
The turf, the pebbles, regular and still --
The tired white little soldiers marking time!
But they are feeble, and their watch is brief.
Today remembering a name, tomorrow
They will mourn the death of memory;
Another morrow they are gone; time's wind
Has blown the sweet-briar roses over them.
Earth does not mind the madness of her children --
She has room. From one gaunt womb she could
Pour back those cities, and fill all these fields
With men and women aching at their toil,
And droll-faced children trudging with a pail
To greet them. This raw miracle of life
Is ruthtless, reckless, sure. Plunge in your hands
To fashion it; be ruthless, reckless, sure.
Fear is the only danger. And the death
Of dreams dreamed weakly is the only death
Of man -- the prayers sighed outward from the earth,
The songs that feed the poet with his wish,
Beatitudes tramped under armies, thoughts
Too mother-tender or too childly wise
To stand out in the weather of the world,
And deeds untimely kind, and deed-like words
Of love's apostles, who would pilgrim down
The black volcanic valley of all time
With hymns and waving palms, their sweet white banners
Lost and perishing, like breath of brooks,
Like strings of thin mist when the mountains burn.
In them man's spirit in its power dies.
The rest is nature's life -- and she will live,
And laugh on dancing to the doomless future,
Slave to no thought softer than her own.





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