Classic Poem

The fire that burnt out the aircraft on the high moorland,
was extinguished by early morning and
the bracken grows next year as green.
The same moment extinguished the navigator's struggle
with tomorrow's evils, and he has rest
because the heap of ashes has no extension
in the world of anxieties, builds up no field
of hope to grope in the world of opportunity.
But the pilot who stretched out both hands
fending the fire from head and neck
and by good fortune stumbled out —
the flame still burns in his flesh,
after six months it is not extinguished,
leaving him only a framework of hand and forearm
like rafters extending from a burning building.
Homer's war scene has often the screen
of warring Greeks and Trojans and in between,
a body, fallen, Patroclus or Sarpedon's,
the war's objective, a weight of torn flesh and crushed bones
with all its brave war gear; crashed are corselet, sword and shield,
engines of war about their wielder who cannot wield.
Here on the operating table also
very often a body lies,
and men fight
against superhuman forces of fire,
and explosion, and the whole earth picked up by a giant
and hurled at a man at 200' per second.
And somehow they will find, and somehow release,
inside the man forces which extinguish fire
and counter the dread blow,
and the man goes away whole, a miracle indeed.