Ghost Maps: Poems for Carl Hruska

Morning
Ardennes - January 1945

You wouldn't believe how beautiful
it was. In the night the fog would freeze
and in the morning everything
was soft with it--ghosts of trees.
We advanced into open fields
the colour of apple blossom,
delicate with blue shadows.
Against that snow we stood out
like deer.
And then
the shelling would start.

Winter White
Ardennes - January 1945

Midafternoon in some nameless town
a door bangs, a woman comes running,
arms full of folded white. One sheet
flies out behind her like a banner, and
they understand. She's giving them linens,
winter camouflage. With no language,
he thanks her, and she presses to him,
weeping. When she runs he lifts
his hands and finds
a table cloth. Not lace,
but that stiff stuff,
cutwork. He cuts it
with his bayonet.
Pulls it over his head. Inside,
he smells the starch,
the ghost of iron.

Kingdoms
Army Hospital, France - March, 1945

At the general hospital, they tidy things up:
officers in one room, grunts in others,
sorted out by wound. He figures
things could be worse: the gurney clicks by
the belly ward, the ward for guys
who caught it in the face.
The Kingdom of the Blind,
that's called. Though each room is a kind
of kingdom. At night,
in the Shu-mine ward, they line up
the shortened lumps of legs.

Purple Heart
Hospital Ship, English Channel - March, 1945

The medal-pinners came to Dover
to meet the ship. I remember, we were s'posed
to lie at attention. A man could die, and they'd only say
how fine his attention --

Never put my name
on anything, would you, Erin?

Silage
North Carolina -- April 1945

At Fort Bragg, they teach him to change
his own dressing. He has a farmer's eye
for it, for silage -- stuff cut green
and mulched for feed. Wet is bad,
and tight: the heat of rot can set
the stack on fire. He thinks of that
and twines his stump with gauze. How strange
it will be -- the green prairie,
the prettiest time of year. When he left
they were burning the cornfields.
He smells again that yellow
smoulder, dreams
the sweep of horizon,
starlings rising,
home.