I Had an Uncle Who Crushed by War
returned to his novel in a box,
feeding chapter by chapter to the furnace,
winter 1944.
Start again: My uncle handed every all of it
to coals my grandfather dutifully
shoveled through a little door of flame, muted roar
elemental as air, a hardening
wrenched from earth.
Freezing is a legacy too. Overgrown
undergrowth, one branch scrapes that cellar’s high
window, two, maybe
three birds bearing up in the cold, their pitiful calls
out by forsythia cut back for the season.
One page, then another and another into ash, story
of my uncle’s story before
I had any idea to look straight into fire
for the exact containment of
what fury it takes to warm such a house
or how not day but night most resembles the mind.
A novel written before he came back old, before
North Africa and the landing in Sicily,
before what falls
falls as blackout and silence.
What’s worse is what time does, the horrific
turning banal, turning so-what, one step from forgotten.
Or maybe that’s good, a good thing,
the slate gone blank for
better-this-time, okay? is the theory.
Every next generation goes dark with hope.
Not that they really sing—a robin, a blackcap,
the cardinal a bloodred wound
in such weather. I can’t say
my saying changes anything much.
All burning burns on. Nevertheless: a crack in that window.
Winter birds. My uncle turns his head,
enough ache of the world in their sound.
