Randall Jarrell

 

Losses

by Randall Jarrell

 

It was not dying: everybody died.

It was not dying: we had died before

In the routine crashes-- and our fields

Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks,

And the rates rose, all because of us.

We died on the wrong page of the almanac,

Scattered on mountains fifty miles away;

Diving on haystacks, fighting with a friend,

We blazed up on the lines we never saw.

We died like aunts or pets or foreigners.

(When we left high school nothing else had died

For us to figure we had died like.)

 

In our new planes, with our new crews, we bombed

The ranges by the desert or the shore,

Fired at towed targets, waited for our scores--

And turned into replacements and worke up

One morning, over England, operational.

 

It wasn't different: but if we died

It was not an accident but a mistake

(But an easy one for anyone to make.)

We read our mail and counted up our missions--

In bombers named for girls, we burned

The cities we had learned about in school--

Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among

The people we had killed and never seen.

When we lasted long enough they gave us medals;

When we died they said, "Our casualties were low."

 

The said, "Here are the maps"; we burned the cities.

 

It was not dying --no, not ever dying;

But the night I died I dreamed that I was dead,

And the cities said to me: "Why are you dying?

We are satisfied, if you are; but why did I die?"

 

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Cinderella

by Randall Jarrell

 

Her imaginary playmate was a grown-up

In sea-coal satin. The flame-blue glances,

The wings gauzy as the membrane that the ashes

Draw over an old ember --as the mother

In a jug of cider-- were a comfort to her.

They sat by the fire and told each other stories.

 

"What men want..." said the godmother softly--

How she went on it is hard for a man to say.

Their eyes, on their Father, were monumental marble.

Then they smiled like two old women, bussed each other,

Said, "Gossip, gossip"; and, lapped in each other's looks,

Mirror for Mirror, drank a cup of tea.

 

Of cambric tea. But there is a reality

Under the good silk of the good sisters'

Good ball gowns. She knew... Hard-breasted, naked-eyed,

She pushed her silk feet into glass, and rose within

A gown of imaginary gauze. The shy prince drank

A toast to her in champagne from her slipper

 

And breathed, "Bewitching!" Breathed, "I am bewitched!"

--She said to her godmother, "Men!"

And, later, looking down to see her flesh

Look back up from under lace, the ashy gauze

And pulsing marble of a bridal veil,

She wished it all a widow's coal-black weeds.

 

A sullen wife and a reluctant mother,

She sat all day in silence by the fire.

Better, later, to stare past her sons' sons,

Her daughters' daughter, and tell stories to the fire.

But best, dead, damned, to rock forever

Beside Hell's fireside-- to see within the flames

 

The Heaven to whosee gold-gauzed door there comes

A little dark old woman, the God's Mother,

And cries, "Come in, come in! My son's out now,

Out now, will be back soon, may be back never,

Who knows, eh? We know what they are--men, men!

But come, come in till then! Come in till then!

 

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The Elementary Scene

by Randall Jarrell

 

Looking back in my mind I can see

The white sun like a tin plate

Over the wooden turning of the weeds;

The street jerking --a wet swing--

To end by the wall the children sang.

 

The thin grass by the girls' door,

Trodden on, straggling, yellow and rotten,

And the gaunt field with its one tied cow--

The dead land waking sadly to my life--

Stir, and curl deeper in the eyes of time.

 

The rotting pumpkin under the stairs

Bundled with switches and the cold ashes

Still holds for me, in its unwavering eyes,

The stinking shapes of cranes and witches,

Their path slanting down the pumpkin's sky.

 

Its stars beckon through the frost like cottages

(Homes of the Bear, the Hunter--of that absent star,

The dark where the flushed child struggles into sleep)

Till, leaning a lifetime to the comforter,

I float above the small limbs like their dream:

 

I, I, the future that mends everything.

 

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