in the asking of that terrible question:

“What do the people get for the wars they fight

with each other?”

Any mother might be saying now:

“The cool music of deep hearts is on me.

The fathoms of ancient fears are on me.”

Nearer than any mother’s heart wishes

now is heartbreak time.

1938

Open Letter to the Poet Archibald MacLeish Who Has Forsaken His Massachusetts Farm to Make Propaganda for Freedom

Thomas Jefferson had red hair and a violin

and he loved life and people and music

and books and writing and quiet thoughts—

a lover of peace, decency, good order,

summer corn ripening for the bins of winter,

cows in green pastures, colts sucking at mares,

apple trees waiting to laugh with pippins—

Jefferson loved peace like a good farmer.

And yet—for eight years he fought in a war—

writing with his own hand the war announcement

named The Declaration of Independence

making The Fourth of July a sacred calendar date.

And there was his friend and comrade

Ben Franklin, the printer, bookman, diplomat:

all Franklin asked was they let him alone

so he could do his work as lover of peace and work—

Franklin too made war for eight years—

the same Franklin who said two nations

would better throw dice than go to war—

he threw in with fighters for freedom—

for eight years he threw in all he had:

the books, the printshop, fun with electricity,

searches and researches in science pure and applied—

these had to wait while he joined himself

to eight long years of war for freedom, independence.

Now, of course, these two odd fellows

stand as only two among many:

the list runs long of these fellows,

lovers of peace, decency, good order,

who throw in with all they’ve got

for the abstractions “freedom,” “independence.”

Strictly they were gentle men, not hunting trouble.

Strictly they wanted quiet, the good life, freedom.

They would rather have had the horses of instruction

those eight years they gave to the tigers of wrath.

The record runs they were both dreamers

at the same time they refused imitations of the real thing

at the same time they stood up and talked back

at the same time they met the speech of steel and cunning with

their own relentless steel and cunning.

1940

The Man with the Broken Fingers

(When this tale of methodically inflicted agony was published in The Chicago Times Syndicate newspapers August 23, 1942, it brought inquiries whether it was war propaganda or based on an actual incident. My informant was a Norwegian ski champion known as Lieutenant “Andreas” for the safety of his home kinfolk. He gave the incident as he had it from the son of the main tragic figure. Among many other related points was one of German soldiers whose minds began to crack under the strain of the inhuman acts required of them by their superiors, such soldiers being returned to Germany as “mental cases” needing therapeutic treatment. “Andreas,” a sober and modest hero, was killed in a bomber flight over Berlin. Friends of “Andreas” say the story below had translation into other languages and circulation by undergrounds.)