A field of wind gave license for defeat.
I can’t explain. The grass bent. The wind
seemed full of men but without hate or fame.
I was farther than that farm where the road
slants off to nowhere, and the field I’m sure
is in this wine or that man’s voice. The man
and this canteen were also here
twenty years ago and just as old.
Hate for me was dirt until I woke up
five miles over Villach in a smoke
that shook my tongue. Here, by accident,
the wrong truck, I came back to the world.
This canteen is home-old. A man can walk
the road outside without a song or gun.
I can’t explain the wind. The field is east
toward the Adriatic from my wine.
I’d walked from cruel soil to a trout
for love but never from a bad sky
to a field of wind I can’t explain.
The drone of bombers going home
made the weather warm. My uniform
turned foreign where the olive trees
throw silver to each other down the hill.
Olive leaves were silver I could spend.
Say wind I can’t explain. That field is vital
and the Adriatic warm. Don’t our real friends
tell us when we fail? Don’t honest fields
reveal us in their winds? Planes and men
once tumbled but the war went on absurd.
I can’t explain the wine. This crude bench
and rough table and that flaking plaster—
most of all the long nights make this home.
Home’s always been a long way from a friend.
I mix up things, the town, the wind, the war.
I can’t explain the drone. Bombers seemed
to scream toward the target, on the let-down
hum. My memory is weak from bombs.
Say I dropped them bad with shaking sight.
Call me German and my enemy the air.
Clouds are definite types. High ones, cirrus.
Cumulus, big fluffy kind, and if with rain,
also nimbus. Don’t fly into them.
I can’t explain. Somewhere in a gray ball
wind is killing. I forgot the stratus
high and thin. I forget my field
of wind, out there east between
the Adriatic and my second glass of wine.
I’ll find the field. I’ll go feeble down
the road strung gray like spoiled wine
in the sky. A sky too clear of cloud
is fatal. Trust the nimbus. Trust dark clouds
to rain. I can’t explain the sun. The man
will serve me wine until a bomber fleet
lost twenty years comes droning home.
I can’t explain. Outside, on the road
that leaves the town reluctantly,
way out the road’s a field of wind.