Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO WHOM?, by MAX ENDICOFF


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO WHOM?, by                    
First Line: Trivial-?
Last Line: To whom? To whom?
Subject(s): Death; Graves; Memory; Dead, The; Tombs; Tombstones


(Our losses were trivial, 728 killed and 4,354
wounded.—European News Item.)

Trivial———?
To whom? TO WHOM?

Not to the dead,
Whose battered bodies
Are like the shapeless fragments of an image
Carelessly crushed by the wanton hand
Of a titanic malevolence.
In them, the lust of life
Flamed as sharp and clear
As in the wheezing breasts of the hounds
Who foam and whine
For the blood
They do not have to give.

Trivial———?
To whom? TO WHOM?
Not to the bereaved at home,
The tender women
Who make gods of the men they love—
Their tear-scorched prayers
Are of passionate pity for the voiceless dead
And of baffled hatred for the boastful living.

Trivial———?
To whom? TO WHOM?

Not to the ferocious enemy,
For they too have their dead—
The uncounted horde of startled beings,
That black treachery,
With artful and cunning words,
Had lured from the free and turbulent spaces of life
To the bleak, eternal confines
Of a hurried and undesired grave.

Trivial———?
To whom? TO WHOM?





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