WEBVTT

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That is one vision of death.

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I mean, that's the
ultimate death.

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Which is a horror
to anyone, I think,

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who considered it, isn't it?

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To consider yourself
as being dead.

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Imagine yourself as dead.

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As Marceau couldn't do
it, I don't think we can.

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It's almost
philosophical probability

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to really consider
yourself as being dead.

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I think we have that
much of a hold on life

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that we block it out
of our mind somehow,

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and the ultimate exact death
is the most horrible vision

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of all.

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We don't need any
puritanical visions of hell.

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Death itself is hell.

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The other kind of a death,
which is perhaps even worse,

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because Wally Brown couldn't
worry about it whether I found

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him or whether I really
cared enough to write

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a poem about him.

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The other kind of a death, I
suppose, is a life in death.

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Where you go through
life already,

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for all practical
purposes, being dead.

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Where you have been
turned off to life.

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Turned off to the flesh.

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Turned off to sex.

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Turned off as a
communicating human being.

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And I've imagined
this situation,

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which is the title poem from
this, "The Elderly Battlefield

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Nurse."

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And obvious players when we
are at battlefield, where life

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is to me the battlefield.

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Where elderness means that
phase of life for most people

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in which death is approaching.

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It is a problem
to be worked out.

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I met such a woman as the one
that I describe here as far

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as age.

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And being as a
teenager in war, I've

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fictionalized her life a bit.

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This woman from Albuquerque
who died two days before I came

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back from Wisconsin
to Albuquerque, hoping

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to talk to her again.

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The poem had been published , in
Britain and I wanted to see her

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again.

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Because at that time, she
was almost 90 years old

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and extremely anti-war and
anti-Vietnam involvement.

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And was staying alive
at this point, I think,

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almost because she
was involved in what

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was happening politically.

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And worried about
war casualties,

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and things like that, which
kept her alive almost to 90.

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What I fictionalized
about, obviously,

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is another kind of a
woman who on seeing

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the horrors of
battlefield and seeing men

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with their legs blown
off has been turned off

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towards love, towards
acceptance of life

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for the rest of her life.

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And in old age, thinks about it.

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And then it is too
late to go back,

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and so she ends up with
watering her flowers.

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Trying to keep other things
alive, but knowing it's

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too late for her.

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This is "The Elderly
Battlefield Nurse."

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This is the other
vision of death.

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Not like the "Wally Brown" poem,
that is the ultimate horror.

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But the other one, of course,
is the elderly battlefield nurse

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who has to live in herself.

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And it's a dramatic
monologue, she speaks--

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"I did all my serious conversing
in the fashionless Span-Am war.

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Bandaging private parts before
sensing what they were for.

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I recuperated from
the clean holes.

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A finger could
enter like a mole,

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and sink down with
Alice out of sight.

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My body writhed on
a sheetless bed,

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outside my flesh for nights.

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I stilled when the firing
stoppered in their toy cork

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guns.

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My body's urgings also stopped.

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I could have had the decorated
pick of generals, either side.

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If I piped up, I was married.

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Faithful.

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Continent.

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All a lie.

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Even privates mocked
me when I cringed

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beneath a wash basin of blood,
amputated feet, a syringe.

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On caskets, I fastened
labels and dreamt screaming

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of my own baby
aborted on a table.

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Moaning as I lay
empty as a shell.

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I thought once I might
unwind the bandages

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like hands on clocks.

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Just start back before the fear.

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Now I water flowers.

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Moisture sinks.

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We plant and never think of
roots, yet all must drink.

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My own body, steeped in sun, sat
down, stone hard and clothed.

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Perhaps the flesh can't quit.

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I've come to learn too late.

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The moisture in me is all gone.

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I'll tend these dry
firewheels and wait."

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