Email Poem

Your IP Address: 162.159.114.57

From Email:	Required Email Address Not Valid.
To Email:	Email Address Not Valid. Required
Subject	Required
Personal Note:
Poem Title:
Poem	On March 1, 1958, four deserters from the French Army of North Africa, August Rein, Henri Bruette, Jack Dauville, & Thomas Delain, robbed a government pay station at Orleansville. Because of the subsequent confession of Dauville the other three were captured or shot. Dauville was given his freedom and returned to the land of his birth, the U.S.A. AUGUST REIN: from a last camp near St. Remy I dig in the soft earth all afternoon, spacing the holes a foot or so from the wall. Tonight we eat potatoes, tomorrow rice and carrots. The earth here is like the earth nowhere, ancient with wood rot. How can anything come forth, I wonder; and the days are all alike, if there is more than one day. If there is more of this I will not endure. I have grown so used to being watched I can no longer sleep without my watcher. The thing I fought against, the dark cape, crimsoned with terror that I so hated comforts me now. Thomas is dead; insanity, prison, cowardice, or slow inner capitulation has found us all, and all men turn from us, knowing our pain is not theirs or caused by them. HENRI BRUETTE: from a hospital in Algiers Dear Suzanne: this letter will not reach you because I can't write it; I have no pencil, no paper, only the blunt end of my anger. My dear, if I had words how could I report the imperfect failure for which I began to die? I might begin by saying that it was for clarity, though I did not find it in terror: dubiously entered each act, unsure of who I was and what I did, touching my face for fear I was another inside my head I played back pictures of my childhood, of my wife even, for it was in her I found myself beaten, safe, and furthest from the present. It is her face I see now though all I say is meant for you, her face in the slow agony of sexual release. I cannot see you. The dark wall ribbed with spittle on which I play my childhood brings me to this bed, mastered by what I was, betrayed by those I trusted. The one word my mouth must open to is why. JACK DAUVILLE: from a hotel in Tampa, Florida From Orleansville we drove south until we reached the hills, then east until the road stopped. I was nervous and couldn't eat. Thomas took over, told us when to think and when to shit. We turned north and reached Blida by first dawn and the City by morning, having dumped our weapons beside an empty road. We were free. We parted, and to this hour I haven't seen them, except in photographs: the black hair and torn features of Thomas Delain captured a moment before his death on the pages of the world, smeared in the act. I tortured myself with their betrayal: alone I hurled them into freedom, inner freedom which I can't find nor ever will until they are dead. In my mind Delain stands against the wall precise in detail, steadied for the betrayal. "La France C'Est Moi," he cried, but the irony was lost. Since I returned to the U.S. nothing goes well. I stay up too late, don't sleep, and am losing weight. Thomas, I say, is dead, but what use telling myself what I won't believe. The hotel quiets early at night, the aged brace themselves for another sleep, and offshore the sea quickens its pace. I am suddenly old, caught in a strange country for which no man would die. THOMAS DELAIN: from a journal found on his person At night wakened by the freight trains boring through the suburbs of Lyon, I watched first light corrode the darkness, disturb what little wildlife was left in the alleys: birds moved from branch to branch, and the dogs leapt at the garbage. Winter numbed even the hearts of the young who had only their hearts. We heard the war coming; the long wait was over, and we moved along the crowded roads south not looking for what lost loves fell by the roadsides. To flee at all cost, that was my youth. Here in the African night wakened by what I do not know and shivering in the heat, listen as the men fight with sleep. Loosed from their weapons they cry out, frightened and young, who have never been children. Once merely to be strong, to live, was moral. Within these uniforms we accept the evil we were chosen to deliver, and no act human or benign can free us from ourselves. Wait, sleep, blind soldiers of a blind will, and listen for that old command dreaming of authority.
	Type the characters you see in the picture Required