<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">To World War Two </div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;" class=""><br class=""></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">Early on you introduced me to young women in bars<br class="">
You were large, and with a large hand<br class="">
You presented them in different cities,<br class="">
Made me in San Luis Obispo, drunk<br class="">
On French seventy-fives, in Los Angeles, on pousse-cafe's. <br class="">
It was a time of general confusion <br class="">
Of being a body hurled at a wall. <br class="">
I didn't do much fighting. I sat, rather I stood, in a foxhole.<br class="">
I stood while the typhoon splashed us into morning.<br class="">
It felt unusual<br class="">
Even if for a good cause<br class="">
To be part of a destructive force<br class="">
With my rifle in my hands<br class="">
And in my head<br class="">
My serial number<br class="">
The entire object of my existence<br class="">
To eliminate Japanese soldiers<br class="">
By killing them<br class="">
With a rifle or with a grenade<br class="">
And then, many years after that, <br class="">
I could write poetry<br class="">
Fall in love<br class="">
And have a daughter<br class="">
And think about these things<br class="">
From a great distance<br class="">
If I survived<br class="">
I was "paying my debt<br class="">
To society" a paid<br class="">
Killer. It wasn't <br class="">
like anything I'd done<br class="">
Before, on the paved<br class="">
Streets of Cincinatti<br class="">
Or on the ballroom floor<br class="">
At Mr. Vathe's dancing class<br class="">
What would Anne Marie Goldsmith<br class="">
Have thought of me<br class="">
If instead of asking her to dance<br class="">
I had put my BAR to my shoulder<br class="">
And shot her in the face<br class="">
I thought about her in my foxhole--<br class="">
One, in a foxhole near me, has his throat cut during the night<br class="">
We take precautions but it is night and it is you.<br class="">
The typhoon continues and so do you.<br class="">
"I can't be killed--because of my poetry. I have to live on in order to write <br class="">
it."<br class="">
I thought--even crazier thought, or just as crazy--<br class="">
"If I'm killed while thinking of lines, it will be too corny<br class="">
When it's reported" (I imagined it would be reported!)<br class="">
So I kept thinking of lines of poetry. One that came to me on the beach on <br class="">
Leyte<br class="">
Was "The surf comes in like masochistic lions."<br class="">
I loved this terrible line. It was keeping me alive. My Uncle Leo wrote to me,<br class="">
"You won't believe this, but some day you may wish<br class="">
You were footloose and twenty on Leyte again." I have never wanted <br class="">
To be on Leyte again,<br class="">
With you, whispering into my ear,<br class="">
"Go on and win me! Tomorrow you might not be alive,<br class="">
So do it today!" How could anyone win you?<br class="">
You were too much for me, though I<br class="">
Was older than you were and in camouflage. But for you<br class="">
Who threw everything together, and had all the systems<br class="">
Working for you all the time, this was trivial. If you could use me<br class="">
You'd use me, and then forget. How else <br class="">
Did I think you'd behave?<br class="">
I'm glad you ended. I'm glad I didn't die. Or lose my mind.<br class="">
As machines make ice<br class="">
We made dead enemy soldiers, in <br class="">
Dark jungle alleys, with weapons in our hands<br class="">
That produced fire and kept going straight through<br class="">
I was carrying one,<br class="">
I who had gone about for years as a child<br class="">
Praying God don't let there be another war<br class="">
Or if there is, don't let me be in it. Well, I was in you.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">All you cared about was existing and being won.<br class="">
You died of a bomb blast in Nagasaki, and there were parades.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span>- Kenneth Koch</p><div class=""><br class=""></div></body></html>