Adam’s Writing

Adam Szychowsk   645 words   March 10th, 2005
Submitted to New Yorker Magazine

I

Yours is a story embedded, embroidered –
With veins of epic; whorled with
Tragedy.  In the soil of your hearth,
Beneath your colors, your white banner and red sails,
Stars adrift on a dark sea –
Hidden by wet stones chopped, chopped –
A host to animals, insects, grass – yawing out, up
Your eyes, cool like stones nine days after –
Dry beneath our fingertips as we pulled the lids
Closed.

II

Birthed from the ground after nine days’
Torment, we sat in a circle and watched
The Privates clean your face
With the sweatbands from their helmets.
Nine days submerged in a pool, in a womb
Of blood and wet earth, rain – your eyes were bleached
Whitened old man’s eyes
And dry, so dry.  They cried –
Their tears mingled in the hollows
Of your stare
The illusion so strong – dewy-eyed Henry
Back from death!  But this was no mythology
And we closed them.  Your body washed
Rolled in nine days’ funeral sacraments – the
vegetation
Of shores you never knew you would see.

In Fate’s pall, green blood vessels from Atlan
Shoulders, a grimace on your face at this
Last dishonor.  They carried you to the helicopter.
Its blades beating the ear – licking the crescents
like
A flame.  This is your pyre.
Ascend, our last man.

III

Through early watches, you held us
In Rhapsody of your exploits – your family
Your future, staring at the ground as you mentioned
The smell of your son
As he was born.  Alan, son of Andrea –
The alliterated family.  Your father’s face, like
paper –
Wrinkled in hard-walking pride as you sketched
A salute to him before the bus.  And we were lost
From those alien marshes; we were your subjects.
Tracers running through the night fell harmless around
us,
Sparks.  In the phalanx with you, Prince.  Home.
Now
In that grimacing head a grid –
– “Goodnight, City.  Sleep, sleep.” –
Has blackened.  And we can not obey; once you
Said your infant screamed as you reached for him
In your olive uniform and officer’s bars;
In your dusty helmet.
So we lay watchful, pensive.

You cried that night, but as we killed the soldier
Your face was like a stage-curtain pulled taut;
The muscles in your sunburned jaw like ropes as
You stripped the dead for weapons and supplies.  He
Stared into the rain as if he had started it.
The purple convexes over our heads –
His wrath.

You were the only one to crawl across the
Plain.
Your blood soaked into the clay as you fell;
Your throat opening, a little robin taking flight.
And then.
Nine days later.

IV

We played chess as you rotted – so many
Games.  The tally carved into the ground next to the
board
Washed away in the rain – and
Morning – more games, a clean ground.
Pawns marching stupidly away from their sides
Black and white;
Onward!  Onward!
Squares lay forgotten behind the grinding infantry
march.
And you, our knight, our Tamer of Fiery Steeds –
Dishonor in the night square ahead.
We played on, through fresh deployments of pawns, to
Stalemate.

Savages in the jungle across the Board –
Like us in finger and foot.  Savages
But Gods of the native soil
Plumed with indigenous shrubbery
Muscles sheathed in golden alien-skin.
So many games that
Our hands were stained deep.  The rain abated
And water, scarce.  We played chess, dirty
Afraid to recover you, bundle of rags
Our Prince
As the weather tore your body
They waited in the jungle across the plain
We cleaned our fingernails with folding knives
And speculated about baseball teams, careful
Not to nick the skin.  In the jungle
You are careful with your skin
But you still get dirty – those are the rules.
So you protect it –
As much as you can.
Remembering you doing the same
And bleeding.