Small Thought Drawing Evening Blinds

The battle poems are vivid,

Whether in language you know

Or language in translation,

Which, if the translation’s good,

Always remains slightly strange,

A third language of its own,

Far from the original

But not entirely your own.

Could be Homer or Whitman,

Any of the Great War ghosts

From Rosenberg to Sassoon,

And so on—the battle poems

Are vivid, ashes and groans,

Dismembered screams and gurgling,

But weirdly the most haunting

Lines on war lean domestic—

Humble as a button, slow

Dusk a drawing down of blinds.