Poems by Randall Jarrell | Poetree

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The Death Of The Ball Turret Gunner

The Death Of The Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Authors note: "A ball turret was a Plexiglas sphere set into the belly of a B-17 or B-24, and inhabited by two .50 caliber machine-guns and one man, a short small man. When this gunner tracked with his machine guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below, he revolved with the turret; hunched upside-down in his little sphere, he looked like the foetus in the womb. The fighters which attacked him were armed with cannon firing explosive shells. The hose was a steam hose." --

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by Randall Jarrell

90 North

90 North

At home, in my flannel gown, like a bear to its floe,

I clambered to bed; up the globe's impossible sides

I sailed all night—till at last, with my black beard,

My furs and my dogs, I stood at the northern pole.

There in the childish night my companions lay frozen,

The stiff fur knocked at my starveling throat,

And I gave my great sigh: the flakes came huddling,

Were they really my end? In the darkness I turned to my rest.

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by Randall Jarrell

A Camp In The Prussian Forest

A Camp In The Prussian Forest

I walk beside the prisoners to the road.

Load on puffed load,

Their corpses, stacked like sodden wood,

Lie barred or galled with blood

By the charred warehouse. No one comes to-day

In the old way

To knock the fillings from their teeth;

The dark, coned, common wreath

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by Randall Jarrell

Children Selecting Books In A Library

Children Selecting Books In A Library

With beasts and gods, above, the wall is bright.

The child's head, bent to the book-colored shelves,

Is slow and sidelong and food-gathering,

Moving in blind grace… yet from the mural, Care

The grey-eyed one, fishing the morning mist,

Seizes the baby hero by the hair

And whispers, in the tongue of gods and children,

Words of a doom as ecumenical as dawn

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by Randall Jarrell