This poem's weird.
It's from a period when I was reading about one of the wars
during the 16th century, I think, in Germany or something.
And then I just wrote it, but I don't--
somebody took it for a magazine, but I
don't understand why because I really revised
it and it had all these faults in it.
And it probably still does, but I'll read it anyway.
You've always got to have some fillers.
[LAUGHS] You do.
It matters somehow and somehow it doesn't.
It's called "The Deserter."
"Through the hole in the hut's wall,
I watched the old woman who put me up
leaning against a wooden tub, elbow deep in wash water.
At my feet, the red coat stained red black
from the burning of the last village
gives off the smell of leather rubbed
with spices and pieces of charred wood.
I go to her, feeling an itch somewhere inside my mouth,
knowing I've got to leave everything of myself here.
I raise the rifle as she presses a white shawl far down
in the water and fire.
She dies quietly, even her heart spits blood
through clenched teeth.
And take bread onions radishes and set out,
leaving the rifle behind while the wind is down.
And stillness, with its knives of powdered lead,
slashes the coarse brown hair from my arms
as I hold them empty at my sides."