Celebrate V-E Day with Ike’s Colleen driver
from Apex, page 5
Hetaira Press, Boston, 1998
After the Germans signed,
our Allied stars slapped backs
and shedding with every camera’s flash
the worry that made them thin, you could tell
how they’ll age in the easy occupations their nerves
have yearned for, the soft campaigns.
Tonight, walking through our chateau’s moonlit
and jazz amazed gardens, they’ll aim only champagne,
command just squads of waiters or grope along the garter line.
Here surrender holds.
But in the black forest a sniper, some Nietzsche reader,
thumbs his bolt and waits. A farm boy
clumsy in his boots from years of bare feet trips
a mine — its malice goes deep, it happens far away
while defeat is always what’s nearby that can’t be helped;
for me — the general who sleeps in my V and returns
a hero to his quiet stateside wife.