The Friday Poem on 19/04/2024
The five brief end-stopped lines of the first stanza give us a series of glancing images and build a composite picture in which we can locate the speaker of the poem. The second stanza tells us more about his life, much of which has been concerned with war — Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the awful effects of war on soldiers. Everything is pared down, there’s no unnecessary padding here. The tone of this poem is wistful, resigned, experienced. There’s an inevitability to that searchlight. Plus ça change, Halleck seems to imply, plus c’est la même chose …
East Dubuque Sandbar 1959
Feltes Motors searchlight scans the sky.
Mid August, rain coming soon.
Children’s holes to China left from the day.
Moonlight on parking lot gravel.
A car radio plays Susie Darlin.
No thought of coming years:
Johnny M legless in Vietnam,
Afghanistan and Iraq decades away,
Charlie T with a gun in his mouth
in 1963 Chicago to ease his pain.
Lynda pushes me away, ignoring my passion
stiff as a whalebone corset. It fades
in the moment. Dreams won’t change.
My curiosity will move me to New York.
The searchlight comes around again.
