Art of the Spoken Word
Geof Bard
poems for the hour after midnight
poems for the hour after midnight
Two thinkers. One of them is bronze.
A poem that lives, for now, only in the voice
I wrote this poem while I was homeless, living outside through the wet season. When you have no roof, rain is not weather. It's a companion, a judge and sometimes a kind of grace.
It hasn't been set down in print yet. For now it exists the way poems did for most of human history: spoken, and remembered.
♪ Listen to The RainsWritten against one war, still true of the ones that followed
a ballade · previously read as “The Saint and the Soldier”
This time for land and gold and oil,
Again, they're off into the fray.
Despite a world in stark turmoil,
You still expect a brief soiree,
And see no harm in what they say.
So proud you are thou warrior,
I care not what you think today.
Not long, and you will hate this war.
With evil talk of blood and soil,
The wicked demagogues hold sway.
They bring the nations to a roil,
Embarking on the death highway.
In lethal battlefield array,
You'll hear the Gates of Hades roar;
You'll kiss the earth and hope to stay.
Not long, and you will hate this war.
The saints all try to disembroil.
And yet no matter how they pray
All that they do becomes a foil.
Their own good purposes betray
What they so much in earnest say;
For there is no way to ensure
That all will see the peaceful way.
Not long and you will hate this war.
Envoi
O, what those devils dare to say!
My trusted friend, please heed no more
That demon with his feet of clay.
Not long, and you will hate this war.
Written in March 2003, in opposition to the invasion of Iraq. Read in public
that year at Barnes & Noble in Seattle and at the Karpeles Manuscript
Museum in Tacoma; published on PoemHunter in February 2007. This is the first
studio reading of the full text.
♪ Hear the poet read it
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