Why should I, searching the thesaurus

for synonyms for “chant” and “cadence,”

try to make various and alive the unremitting

noise of war?  Army cadence, battle chant,

if the behavior’s unique to our species,

each bird or whale or wolf in solitary

call (though I’m not sure that I believe

this when all the wolves my neighbor owns

start howling to a police siren), the words of war

are as dull as the armor of the ruthless

Diomedes who stalked the goddess of love

to harray and harass her from what had been the fields

and green pastures of Troy, now decimated

to an excremental slab of mud and limbs.

He pierced her veil of stars and fog to slash

her hand where bone meets palm. So war

is dependent for its reason and its myth

upon the desire of wounding someone’s

lovely form, and the poet must be a solitary

singer (not necessarily nightingale, perhaps

common wren or western meadowlark,

its voice tightening across the distance),

singing a bleak and awkward beauty against

the commonality of war.

 

 

 

© Rebecca Seiferle