Classic Poem

Hiking to town — car to pick up at the shop —
I was caught on the road by Rod
(formerly 8th Air Force, B-
17's) Thompson ... I'd rather walk.
But it's too late already: " Get in.
Got something to show you, " he says
through his drawstring lip and porcelain teeth.

So I'm in for another sad salvo
of statistical duds traject'ried
from World War II ... I shouldn't have said
" formerly " . Rod is still there,
compiling albums and scrapbooks,
attending conventions, reunions, his life
a never-to-be-consummated
instrument approach to Time Past —
that checker of it back there, blotted
by clouds forty years deep and deepening —
the History of the 8th Air Force.

He spirals his way down, fact
by fact, maintaining contact
with others on the same heading. (The same
static in the headset: " No,
Rod, " I remind him. " Fifteenth.
I was 15th, not 8th. " )

But he goes on with the rosters,
the dates, the flight-paths, the targets,
the actuarials of attrition
in the post-war ranks until
my head aches. Where do you put
so many answers to questions
you never asked? And until
I am vaguely ashamed again
at relegating to a lost sill
in the mind's attic, like a moth's wing,
all thought of that cataclysm
that once flung Rod and me
and thousands more yet, sky-high
and world-wide — moths
in a gale then ourselves ...

" Take a look at this, " Rod says
before I can bail out, in the village.
He deals from a deck of snapshots,
one by one, slowly, watching
for any reaction. Well,
I admit there is one.
But I have to hide it, have to look away
from the glossy trophies of Rod's
latest reunion: Mustang, Spitfire ,
Corsair, Thunderbolt ... Even here,
canopies sealed in plastic,
skids in concrete, they are perfect!
Nothing on earth or above it
ever spoke through such trumpets as these
of the warrior's resource, his bravery,
his pride. I wonder if Rod,
too, has to weep when he looks at them.
(You can't really tell. Rod's eyes
water all the time anyway.) But
we both see how they lean
forward and upward, those
falconine fierce shapes
denying till they turn to dust
they have touched their shadows for good,
they are gone as galleons . . . . And then
Rod was gone with them the old
truck banging down Main Street
leaving me (Proust-like) one foot
on the curb, transfixed, remembering . . . .

my father, my father,
the chariot of Israel
and the horsemen thereof!