The War Orphans
(Written after seeing a photograph of Korean children asleep in the snow.)
The snow is the blood of these poor Dead . . . they have no other —
These children, old in the dog’s scale of years, too old
For the hopeless breast — ghosts for whom there is none to care —
Grown fleshless as the skeleton
Of Adam, they have known
More aeons of the cold than he endured
In the First grave of the world. They have, for bed,
The paving stones, the spider spins their blankets, and their bread
Is the shreds and crumbs of dead Chance. In this epoch of the cold,
In which new worlds are formed, new glaciations
To overcast the world that was the heart,
There is only that architecture of the winter, the huge plan
Of the lasting skeleton built from the hunger of Man,
Constructed for hunger — piteous in its griefs, the humiliation
Of outworn flesh, the Ape-cerement, O the tattered foolish clothing‚
Rags stained with the filth of humanity, stink of its toiling —
But never the smell of the heart, with its warmth, its fevers,
Rapacity and grandeur . . . for the cold is Zero
In infinite intensity, brother to democratic
Death, our one equality, who holds
Alike the maelstrom of the blood, the world’s incendiarism,
The summer redness and the hope of the rose,
The beast, and man’s superiority o’er the beast —
That is but this:
Man bites with his smile, and poisons with his kiss.
When, in each dawn
The light on my brow is changed to the mark of Cain,
And my blood cries “Am I my brother’s keeper?” seeing these ghosts
Of man’s forgetfulness of man, I feel again
The tigerish spring in my veins. ... I, who only
Have the lonely Lethe flood for tears.
These children, old in the dog’s scale of years, too old
For the hopeless breast — ghosts for whom there is none to care —
Grown fleshless as the skeleton
Of Adam, they have known
More aeons of the cold than he endured
In the First grave of the world. They have, for bed,
The paving stones, the spider spins their blankets, and their bread
Is the shreds and crumbs of dead Chance. In this epoch of the cold,
In which new worlds are formed, new glaciations
To overcast the world that was the heart,
There is only that architecture of the winter, the huge plan
Of the lasting skeleton built from the hunger of Man,
Constructed for hunger — piteous in its griefs, the humiliation
Of outworn flesh, the Ape-cerement, O the tattered foolish clothing‚
Rags stained with the filth of humanity, stink of its toiling —
But never the smell of the heart, with its warmth, its fevers,
Rapacity and grandeur . . . for the cold is Zero
In infinite intensity, brother to democratic
Death, our one equality, who holds
Alike the maelstrom of the blood, the world’s incendiarism,
The summer redness and the hope of the rose,
The beast, and man’s superiority o’er the beast —
That is but this:
Man bites with his smile, and poisons with his kiss.
When, in each dawn
The light on my brow is changed to the mark of Cain,
And my blood cries “Am I my brother’s keeper?” seeing these ghosts
Of man’s forgetfulness of man, I feel again
The tigerish spring in my veins. ... I, who only
Have the lonely Lethe flood for tears.