William Stafford (1992)
A piccolo played, then a drum.
Feet began to come—a part
of the music. Here came a horse,
clippety clop, away.
My mother said, "Don't run—
the army is after someone
other than us. If you stay
you'll learn our enemy."
Then he came, the speaker. He stood
in the square. He told us who
to hate. I watched my mother's face,
its quiet. "That's him," she said.
for the next two weeks I'm reading William Stafford's The Way It Is
ReplyDeleteso there will probably be a concentration of WS poems here in that span.
The title of the book apparently comes from his "daily writings" (14 July, 1993):
My dreams feel right. They get away but leave a sense of—"Yes. That's the way it is."