Nineteen Sixty-One
Robert Berkowitz
All morning long I have been reading about war,
Probabilities of kill in the deep underground,
Shock in a fluid, the strike against communications;
I have been full of ingenuities; the calculus of death.
And now I have gone for a walk in the public gardens
To see the art festival, the tents, the flags, the swans.
Young lovers giggle at the paintings;
The middle-aged walk heavily about,
Searching for meaning; they are serious
Because my girl left me, I have time, I can see.
I slump on a bench, like the old, and I look, like the young.
These are people of my city, the police and pretty children.
The bums have found this haven; one touches me for four bits.
Summer is their good time; no vermin on park benches.
The old sit without passion, feeling the sun
And memories fading into one another.
Probabilities of kill in the deep underground,
Shock in a fluid, the strike against communications;
I have been full of ingenuities; the calculus of death.
And now I have gone for a walk in the public gardens
To see the art festival, the tents, the flags, the swans.
Young lovers giggle at the paintings;
The middle-aged walk heavily about,
Searching for meaning; they are serious
Because my girl left me, I have time, I can see.
I slump on a bench, like the old, and I look, like the young.
These are people of my city, the police and pretty children.
The bums have found this haven; one touches me for four bits.
Summer is their good time; no vermin on park benches.
The old sit without passion, feeling the sun
And memories fading into one another.
All morning long I have been thinking of war.
My calculations are clumsy, but I know.
I am unprepared, in this city of Sunday, this city of ease.
This good society, where Negroes are free in the sun.
I am wondering how I feel about my species,
Which they think war will destroy, and I wonder,
Thinking of speeches, and canting words, and fear,
If Patrick Henry meant them, those words told us as children.
This is the cool, reasonable, powerful state, designed to run
With a minimum of trouble; and it does.
Bad, and none better. These people, the children
Of this city, are graceful and bright as birds.
My calculations are clumsy, but I know.
I am unprepared, in this city of Sunday, this city of ease.
This good society, where Negroes are free in the sun.
I am wondering how I feel about my species,
Which they think war will destroy, and I wonder,
Thinking of speeches, and canting words, and fear,
If Patrick Henry meant them, those words told us as children.
This is the cool, reasonable, powerful state, designed to run
With a minimum of trouble; and it does.
Bad, and none better. These people, the children
Of this city, are graceful and bright as birds.
Minotaur bawls for blood. In the caves of the Greeks, something real.
Lazy, not experimental, and their science the guesses of a dreaming child.
But they show themselves men.
Joy in battle, bloody cowardice, the gods, the bull, and Auschwitz.
All one, and these Germans were men, like the Greeks, like me.
I think about war, as I fought once. Verse
And the art of war were once gentlemanly jobs.
From history to the calculus ot the future,
The curve has discontinuities no simple convention
Will get us over. Watching the movements of girls
In this summer morning, enjoying the homage paid my friends the artists,
I think, yes, I will defend, all of us, all ot this, all.
Life is not all, and this is a good life, in this set of lives and of cities,
And I sit grateful for my life, and I think of my death.
Lazy, not experimental, and their science the guesses of a dreaming child.
But they show themselves men.
Joy in battle, bloody cowardice, the gods, the bull, and Auschwitz.
All one, and these Germans were men, like the Greeks, like me.
I think about war, as I fought once. Verse
And the art of war were once gentlemanly jobs.
From history to the calculus ot the future,
The curve has discontinuities no simple convention
Will get us over. Watching the movements of girls
In this summer morning, enjoying the homage paid my friends the artists,
I think, yes, I will defend, all of us, all ot this, all.
Life is not all, and this is a good life, in this set of lives and of cities,
And I sit grateful for my life, and I think of my death.