Poem XLIX: War must be war

It may interest you, Mr. President, to know

that Yevtushenko

is dead.

Yevtushenko, who in the years after Stalin

“took on totalitarian leaders

ideological zealots

and timid bureaucrats.”

He wrote of the heirs of Stalin.

“Stalin was far-sighted," he wrote,

"adept in the art

of political warfare he left

many heirs behind on this globe.”

“The cocks are crowing by the sea

brandishing their wings over the Crimea”

which is how poets alert younger poets

that the future us already on fire

and it’s not something

they bother saying

if it isn’t true--

at the same time, that is how Yevtushenko would say

even though you

are intolerably young

you shouldn’t sit too quietly

your poetry may be bad

but that’s okay: in the arena of love

and that of conflict

the poet is right

to try everything.

It would be all too easy to make today’s poem

a poem which betrays

certain skillful emergency tactics

though such days, in which we must play our part, may come

 days such as were planted

when Mayakovsky fired that metal

seed into his heart

--today it will suffice

in Yevtushenko’s memory

to politely remind

a globe crawling with goons

itching for a ten-fold Babii Yar,

crawling with hairballs and pea-heads

with hyperactive speech-patterns,

and jittery protégées

so fond of danger:

"Poetry

                is no chapel of peace.

Poetry

                is savage war.

It has its own manoeuvres of deception.

War

                must be war.

A poet

                is a soldier

and, when he’s right,

he’s right to try all things

                when going through smoke and fire."

 Which where there is, there always is.

4/1/2017