Overheard In An Asylum
And here we have another case
quite different from the last,
another case quite different --
Listen.
Baby, drink.
The war is over.
Mother's breasts
are round with milk.
Baby, rest.
The war is over.
Only pigs
slop over so.
Baby, sleep.
The war is over.
Daddy's come
with a German coin.
Baby, dream.
The war is over.
You'll be a soldier
too.
Yes, we gave her the doll --
Now there we have another case
quite different from --
Commentary
Notes: The bit I indented was italicised in the original. The war in quetion is WW1; the poem is from his 1916 collection ‘Mushrooms’.
Today’s quietly chilling poem is all the more effective for its utter lack of commentary. The language is simple and understated, a fact that detracts nothing from the vividness of the image. I really don’t want to say too much about the poem - it has very little problem speaking for itself.
Links
We’ve run a couple of Kreymborg’s poems:
poem #306: Geometry
poem #245: Whitman
His biography can be found at poem #245
— Martin