After summer came and went and some were ill
And some were in love—many traveled—
The world was unsafe or generous
I wept as men do
Choking in my white room
As the spread out
Abstract gas of war
Suffused every inch of me
So that my obedient hands
Become war hands
My neck a battle neck
My tongue dipped
To atrocities
Like a bee ignorant
Of its flower
Unable to distinguish
Where it’s been or what lies ahead
Do you see, it said, my tongue
How the body, even in repose,
Even with this poetry
Is just a war lord’s gavel?
Planet of the Blind 