Pointed at a blue button in the lapel of his coat, “P-e-a-c-e” spelled in white letters, and he blurted:

“I don’t care who the hell calls me a pacifist. I don’t care who the hell calls me yellow. I say war is the game of a lot of God-damned fools.”

Murmurings in a Field Hospital

(They picked him up in the grass where he had lain two days in the rain with a piece of shrapnel in his lungs.)

Come to me only with playthings now . . .

A picture of a singing woman with blue eyes

Standing at a fence of hollyhocks, poppies and sunflowers . . .

Or an old man I remember sitting with children telling stories

Of days that never happened anywhere in the world . . .

No more iron cold and real to handle,

Shaped for a drive straight ahead.

Bring me only beautiful useless things.

Only old home things touched at sunset in the quiet . . .

And at the window one day in summer

Yellow of the new crock of butter

Stood against the red of new climbing roses . . .

And the world was all playthings.

Buttons

I have been watching the war map slammed up for advertising in front of the newspaper office.

Buttons—red and yellow buttons—blue and black buttons—are shoved back and forth across the map.

A laughing young man, sunny with freckles,

Climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the crowd,

And then fixes a yellow button one inch west

And follows the yellow button with a black button one inch west.

(Ten thousand men and boys twist on their bodies in a red soak along a river edge,

Gasping of wounds, calling for water, some rattling death in their throats.)

Who would guess what it cost to move two buttons one inch on the war map here in front of the newspaper office where the freckle-faced young man is laughing to us?

Salvage

Guns on the battle lines have pounded now a year between Brussels and Paris.

And, William Morris, when I read your old chapter on the great arches and naves and little whimsical corners of the Churches of Northern France—Brr-rr!

I’m glad you’re a dead man, William Morris, I’m glad you’re down in the damp and mouldy, only a memory instead of a living man—I’m glad you’re gone.

You never lied to us, William Morris, you loved the shape of those stones piled and carved for you to dream over and wonder because workmen got joy of life into them,

Workmen in aprons singing while they hammered, and praying, and putting their songs and prayers into the walls and roofs, the bastions and cornerstones and gargoyles—all their children and kisses of women and wheat and roses growing.

I say, William Morris, I’m glad you’re gone, I’m glad you’re a dead man.

Guns on the battle lines have pounded a year now between Brussels and Paris.

Wars

In the old wars drum of hoofs and the beat of shod feet.