I judge matters
differently now:
Captain David McDowell,
cultivated publisher
and editor,
told me in 1949
he fought the Nazis
at Monte Cassino.
An infantryman, half way up
the bloody mountain,
almost shot in half,
screamed in pain all night.
At dawn David ordered
a corporal to shoot the soldier,
whoever he was.
When the corporal refused the order,
David shot
and killed the corporal.
He was one of thousands
slaughtered on the mountain.
I did not whisper or shout
when I was told the story,
“Murderer! Murderer!”
I thought, “It happens,
war is war.”
David spoke French and Italian
without his Southern accent.
He telephoned me to go to
William Carlos Williams’ funeral
at a Rutherford church.
In attendance Bill’s sons,
grandchildren, beautiful
old ladies, ex-girlfriends
and Fanny.
I looked for asphodels
green among the flowers.
I did not recognize
a single attending poet.
I cannot count all
the babies
Bill pulled into America,
among them American poets
he freed from idols—
a few English bastards.
W.C. Williams resolved the conflict
between form and freedom in verse,
stepped lines.
When I drive near Rutherford,
where Bill was born,
along the Passaic River,
still mourning
for what’s past
I feel I’m driving a double-deck bus
along the Tiber in Rome.
I’m dreaming, void of guile,
we’re near the Isola Tiberina
the bus loaded with poets
some cold sober
some drunk some high.
I hear dozens of languages
and dialects—
cobbled, tar,
and dirt music
wherever a shoed, sandaled,
or naked foot has trod.
Montale beside me,
I hear Rimbaud say,
“Je suis un autre.”
Denise Levertov says,
“We’re all here
on this queen of long roads
because of Bill’s love of love,
his secret, American stuff
for all of us.”
We’re on the A-Line
to Michelangelo.
Bill pushes his way
from the back of the bus,
tells me, “Stop!”
He steps down,
disappears in the night
to help a soldier
screaming in pain.
Each of us has his or her reason
to know who’s screaming.
The poets head back home,
to their lives and graves
the most serious appear
the personification of frivolity,
all of them write poetry
that would be impoverished
without nonsense.