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Lance Lee

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Venus as Verdun

We change, but not in sacred eyes
where time is one swollen moment,
a prism turned in history’s light
where tourists babble in the tunnels
as soldiers use their bayonets to scramble
each other’s bowels, and French and German
vowels blend in a common scream
as children beg for sodas and ice
cream.

Outside men go down in long rows
like wheat scythed by a hissing blade
in fields cratered and bare - and
newly sheeted with poppies and grass
where they follow their guide in single file.
She sees new soldiers make love
sensing death in the room -
and nuzzle, newborn, their mother’s breasts

who cannot see the tangled ground
where they fall and freeze, or mushroom
in August heat below bomb-burst skies,
but feel it in their tears and blood and bones
as families search from white cross
to cross under the summer sun.
What can Venus say?
She aches for love, to take these men

in her arms and give them
her little death for the greater,
murmuring, impassioned, Forget, forget -
but knows tragedy and joy make one whole.
Here a man fishes the Meuse
stripped of cover and densely treed,
his rod ticking death all one afternoon
to fish he piles agleam and agape

in a golden gas of sunlight -
and leaden as the bomb fragments
raining down, like the twigs
a father and daughter throw from the bridge,
then race to the other side to see
whose floats by first, and wins,
in water that in Venus’ violet eyes is
so slow and green, and streaming red.

 

Page(s) 93-94

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