Uriah’s America

A Poem for Veterans

I’ve always thought of poetry as the language available to us for things that are unspeakable (usually horrible) or that leave us speechless (usually wonderful). This is why sometimes poetry is difficult to understand. It usually offers a degree of resistance to immediate logical apprehension. The best work is not difficult in order to be cute or sophisticated, but out of necessity.

Czeslaw Milosz said that poetry is not sophisticated. On the contrary, sophistication is a great enemy of poetry.

In this poem I have tried to write as simply as possible. In this case, the resistance the poem offered was chiefly to me. I hope it reads easily even though it was difficult to write. And to those who take it personally, I feel you. So do I. S/F.

You taught me to fight.
       You trained my hands for battle.
You helped me write my will 
       when I had nothing to leave my wife but life.

You gave me stamina and capacity for strife.
       You took my youth and hardened me for war.
You gave me kin I never met—but we know
       each other every time we pass.

You took the early years of marriage 
       and the birth of my first child.
You exchanged for them a sense of aftermath
       and perpetual homelessness.

For you I gave the best years of my life
       and in return you gave me bodies and brass,
diesel fumes and funerals. You gave me speed
       and nearly uncontrollable violence.

You mined in me a primal vein and 
       found that it was rich.
You taught me how to kill.
       I became powerful and chaotic.

You introduced to me the lonely brotherhood
       of warriors. In deserts and
in mountains we bled.
       In jungles and at sea we sweat. 

You made many of us. We are phantoms in life.
       We know each other and you know us.
You gave birth to us.
       But we are watching and waiting. 

Always at night we are watching, 
       and in the back of every room, and the edge of every crowd.
We are neither good nor bad. 
       You needed us to be dangerous and made us so. 

Inside or outside the machine we remain 
       part of the lonely brotherhood of the vigilant and violent. 
You taught us, trained us, hardened us.
       You rely on us to wage the war and disease you make.

The sword will never depart from your house.