Page 47 - Contrast1988Spring

A History of War ( A Sestina)
To Bruce Weigl

I sit o~ my porch in the twilight,
not nunding the soft rain,
deaf to the distant thunder
that mingles in the offing with dark.
I am old enough to know that night is followed by day
and that rain can dampen, without drowning, hope.

Bu~I remember, too, a time when hope
dWIndled as light does in twilight,
and I thought night would forever swallow day;
When clouds could only be low and laced with rain
~d even in morning the horizon could only be dark.

n my porch I listen to the coming thunder,

And remember the sound of thunder
as gunfire burst, and a man had to hope
that he could hide from bullets, as from other things, in the
.dark.
That was the time when all was seen as in twilight,
and all feeling was as the touch of cold rain;
When dark soiled the white cloth of day

And nightmares were no more for sleep and night, than for
day.
Dreams, still, bring the sound of drummers with their thunder,
and of marching feet-sounds like exploding mortar, and
leaves pelted by rain.
And, still, I think that history does not afford man much hope
of crossing the night that divides day from twilight,
of finding his way to the to the light out of the dark.

Contrast Spring 1988 43