Three poems of Weldon Kees

June 1940 (1943):

It is summer, and treachery blurs with the sounds of midnight, The lights blink off at the closing of a door, And I am alone in a warn-out time in wartime, Thinking of those who were trapped by hysteria before.

Flaubert and Henry James and Owen, Bourne with his crooked back, Rilke and Lawrence, Joyce – Gun-shy, annoyers, sick of the kill, the watchers, Suffered the same attack till it broke them or left its scars.

Now the heroes of March are the sorriest fools of April: The beaters of drums, the flag-kissing men, whose eyes Once saw the murder, are washing it clean, accusing: “You are the cowards! All that we told you before was lies!”

It is summer again, the evening is warm and silent. The windows are dark and the mountains are miles away. And the men who were haters of war are mounting the platform. An idiot wind blows; the conscience dies.

Obituary (1943):

Boris is dead. The fatalist parrot No longer screams warnings to Avenue A. He died last week on a rainy day. He is sadly missed. His spirit was rare.

The cage is empty. The unhooked chain, His pitiful droppings, the sunflower seeds, The brass sign, “Boris,” are all that remain. His irritable body is under the weeds.

Like Eliot’s world, he went out with a whimper; Silent for days, with his appetite gone, He watched the traffic flow by, unheeding, His universe crumbling, his heart a stone.

No longer will Boris cry, “Out, brief candle!” Or “Down with tyranny, hate and war!” To astonished churchgoers and businessmen. Boris is dead. The porch is a tomb. And a black wreath decorates the door.

The Bell From Europe (1947):

The tower bell in the Tenth Street Church Rang out nostalgia for the refugee Who knew the source of bells by sound. We liked it, but in ignorance. One meets authorities on bells infrequently.

Europe alone made bells with such a tone, Herr Mannheim said. The bell Struck midnight, and it shook the room. He had heard bells in Leipzig, Chartres, and Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Brussels, Rome. He was a white-faced man with sad enormous eyes.

Reader, for me that bell marked nights Of restless tossing in this narrow bed, The quarrels, the slamming of a door, The kind words, friends for drinks, the books we read, Breakfasts with streets in rain. It rang from Europe all the time. That was what Mannheim said.

It is good to know, now that the bell strikes noon. In this day’s sun, the hedges are Episcopalian As noon is marked by the twelve iron beats. The rector moves ruminantly among the gravestones, As the sound of a dead Europe hangs in the streets.