Glacis of the castle
trenches of the Marne
streets of Chicago
the long war winding down

we are born into an army
my uncle gassed by the Boche
my tree fell in the blizzard
what can we do

they used to call it Armistice Day
but now they say Veterans
as if the war was over
and all the troops came home

I surrender I surrender
do not make me fight

fighting is for children
grown-ups wait it out,
write it out
until the long war peters out

he coughed for the rest of his life
bigger than my father
but you could tell they were brothers

Samuel sang and Seymour coughed
and the war goes on

streets of Portland
plazas of Hong Kong,

listen to me, I don’t know
what I’m talking about,
I just know the war is ending
here and there a little,
ending slow, ending fierce,
the anger louder than the gun
but then the quiet comes
and we surrender.

2.
Plate glass windows
divide us from the sky,
protect us maybe from
breathing what we see,

what gives us light.
There is a wall around me,
the kind that lepers wore,
Unclean, unclean I cry

but do I mean I am or it is,
am I safe from it or it from me?
O glass wall of language,
plate glass of my thought!

3.
Out the back door
up over the hill
watch the mallards
possess the stream,

give up deciding,
yield to the duck
yield to the river,
surrender to everything

you do not mean.

4.
Color is the first precision.
That’s what flags are all about,
enlist in the red army,
blue army, infantry of green.
We are born into the service
as they used to call it,
servicemen and servicewomen
and whom do we serve?
Serve in the forces
armed and unarmed
and what do the forces serve?

Every day I surrender again,
I am a Prisoner of Peace
interned in the natural world,

o tree my guard, my guardian,
my chaplain, comrade, guide.
The war is almost over,
the road is almost there,
love of what is just past the world.

8 November 2020