Sky-blue, sea-blue, girdles of young women That once sacredly bound the Hope of a Race, And little tunics of slain children Woven through the woof, like the snow-flower pattern, Under triumphant spring-green banners Blowing from the four corners of the hills. And the fringes that hold the Sacred Carpet up to Heaven The countless thick-packed white fringes They are the bones of men who loved their Christ. For this is the great Prayer-rug of Islam. I have seen the Turk weaving his Sacred Carpet, I have knelt on the Prayer-rug of Islam! I am apostate, dear Christ! Christian and poet no longer, lover no more, How shall I lay hands on my beloved's blue girdle? Ajan Syrian THE CARPENTER In garments dyed with blood, thorn-crowned, alone, A wistful figure on the battlefield Is by frore moonlight through the dusk revealed. The mutterings of crass voices 'round him groan. "Hearing he has not heard; A god, he has not stirred To stay this shamefulness of war," men say. Dark is earth's skyline, scarlet-dark; and he The love-light in them dies; For fury he has fury and for those He tramples out the wine-press of his wrath; When first Judea heard Of brotherhood. Kings scuttle at his nod, The night brims up with hate and misery; Their cross, and his, drives on the smash of things. James Church Alvord THE VETERAN We came upon him sitting in the sun Blinded by war, and left. And past the fence Wandered young soldiers from the Hand & Flower, Asking advice of his experience. And he said this and that, and told them tales; Blew into air. Then, hearing us beside "Poor kids, how do they know what it's like?" he said. And we stood there, and watched him as he sat Turning his sockets where they went away; Until it came to one of us to ask "And you're-how old?" "Nineteen the third of May." Margaret I. Postgate WAR SKETCHES RETURN TO THE FRONT Sleek cats in sunny doorways He held the picture in his weary brain. The dark was kind at any rate, and yet He moved; the water ran along his skin; ON THE AMBULANCE The upper stretcher on the left-hand side, I mean. Something felt queer behind my back. Here, take my pocket light." "I thought so. I shan't stop. Dawn must be nearly here-the star-shells bloom Just now. "I never saw so many stars." IN MOULINS WOOD I walk alone through a desolation where the stripped and beaten trees are mute, having forgot to pray. Over the shell-holes, torn mouths of clay, hangs the smell of gas, like that of rotting pears. Silence everywhere-save above, where the shells pass whining on invisible grooves. Surely someone is drawing heated irons across the sky. A fearful place to walk with Solitude; my nerves ache. Are all men dead but me, or is this Death by my side? Robert Redfield, Jr. |