They called it “No Man’s Land," but God
was there. I know. I saw Him on
my darkest day, that suddenly
burned bright.
An ocean swept between
its dawn and night, and I paced decks
with mighty strides and wept their length.
My brother dead, whose gun I held
to spot a pheasant on a cloud?
that brother dead, whose rounded laugh
made silence of the waves’ white roar?
Out of the Field of Flanders plunged
the sound, and on another field
it echoed, and another broke
at heart.
As swiftly as my summons,
the word came, and I swung my trappings
across my untaught shoulders, blind
with grief.
Death were an easy thing
to face, since I had faced more bitter
anguish in that printed blow.
Without a hope, but staggered with
a madness that refused to count
him gone, I searched the billet rolls
and registers of wounded.
When
his name sprang black upon a page
it dazed me with its somber glow.
I stumbled through the halls . . . through row
On row of bandaged beds . . . and then
(how like a star, that unstarred night),
Great God! Good God! I saw his face.
Evelyn Coffey
As fortunate as we were ("Blessed", Evelyn would correct me) to sit with her and ask her to tell us the story of her poems, this is one that is a mystery to us, too. How this is written as if it were her own experience! Perhaps she had read an article in the paper and climbed into the heart of the brother, making the experience her own? She had such compassion ,for God and dog alike, dog and God somehow one, as she and this brother were one.
ReplyDelete