Now one of the things that was happening
at the time that poem was written was the Vietnam War.
And there are a number of poems.
Many of us who lived through that wrote a lot of bad poems,
and a few that I hope aren't so bad, about the Vietnam War.
This is not one of the more overt ones.
There are a number of them in the book.
And I'm only going to read one.
"The War."
"There are statues moving into a war
as we move into a dream we will never remember.
They lived before us, but in the dream we may die.
And each carrying one wing as in life,
we may go down all the steps of the heart into swamp water
and draw our hands down after us, out of the names.
And we may lose one by one our features.
The stone may say goodbye to us.
We may say goodbye to the stone forever
and embark, like a left foot alone in the air.
And here at last, voices like small bells,
and be drawn ashore, and wake with the war going on."