Reading in Wartime

Boswell by my bed,

Tolstoy on my table;

Thought the world has bled

For four and a half years,

And wives' and mothers' tears

Collected would be able

To water a little field

Untouched by anger and blood,

A penitential yield

Somewhere in the world;

Though in each latitude

Armies like forest fall,

The iniquitous and the good

Head over heels hurled,

And confusion over all:

Boswell's turbulent friend

And his deafening verbal strife,

Ivan Ilych's death

Tell me more about life,

The meaning and the end

Of our familiar breath,

Both being personal,

Than all the carnage can,

Retrieve the shape of man,

Lost and anonymous,

Tell me wherever I look

That not one soul can die

Of this or any clan

Who is not one of us

And has a personal tie

Perhaps to someone now

Searching an ancient book,

Folk-tale or country song

In many and many a tongue,

To find the original face,

The individual soul,

The eye, the lip, the brow

For ever gone from their place,

And gather an image whole.