Korean Lament

(for Jim Battles)

What if the wind blown westward 
   would not fade?
What if the clay brown dust unearthed 
   their fears?
Seethed in grim bitter blood the dead
   were laid
like rusty piping underneath the piers,
grown white with barnacles, grown
   green with kelp,
and lost beneath the undulating sea.
What if the wind itself should scream 
   for help?
and haunt the hillside hovel? haunt the 
   tree?
or haunt the sky? haunt God for want 
   of peace? . . .
like a thousand eyes that watch us while 
   we eat,
and crave the half-chewed gristle,
   stagnant grease,
or bloated jellyfish to be their meat?
And what of the broken dead we sent
   to die,
whose fixed and frozen graves obstruct
   the sky?

JAY COHEN

The Humanist, 1956