“The War Dead in France,” a poem by Julian Green.
Grief seeps forward.
“… cured now, lifting up where their prior state refused …”
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The War Dead in France
-
Perhaps what’s left of all those young dead, ghosts,
finds lost time as a region’s champagne bubbles —
-
cured now, lifting up where their prior state
refused (it’s hard lying down before your time,
and harder still trying and getting back up) —
-
to pass nobly through one more execution,
a first and second controlled fermentation
that’s softer this time. When we’re not weeping
-
I see ghostly shadows in different forms,
sometimes human, sometimes wine, sometimes a song.
Small spheres rise as music — joy or escape
-
for us, and for them. As death cures, one life,
carbon and oxygen, electrons shared, rises,
and love and tears intermingle with the past.
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A retired geology professor, Julian Green has published work in Indian River Review.
