Arrhythmia

He shouldn’t, but he does. He runs up hills,
thinking about her inaccessibility,
her vanishings, her panics, and her pills,
her ever-constant instability.
He stops at Dyson’s summit, staring out,
over the edge, at the alien world below,
knowing there’s just one thing he cares about:
Where is she now? And why did she go?
He feels the syncopation of his heart,
its whirling tachycardia, its death-
like SVTs, its sudden off-the-chart
fibrillation, and his paucity of breath.
He weakens in a wild, dizzying blur,
which feels just fine, because it feels like her.

– William Baer

First published in “Bocage” and Other Sonnets, Texas Review Press, 2008. Reproduced with permission from the poet.

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Published:
June 19, 2010 – 08:00
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By Madhu
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First Fig

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends–
It gives a lovely light!

– Edna St Vincent Millay

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Published:
June 18, 2010 – 08:00
Author:
By Madhu
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Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime —
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

– Wilfred Owen

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Published:
June 17, 2010 – 08:00
Author:
By Madhu
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