Douglas Penick

Soldier Cry

a narrative

 

(from The Wander)

 

 

I

 

Heaven divides the world:

In dark and light,

In night and day,

In the living and the dead.

 

Only in the movement of sun, moon and stars

Do we know ourselves.

We know ourselves only

As a moment of light between fleeting clouds.

 

Beneath the vast bright sky,

The living dwell in their villages and homes.

 

In fathomless shadow,

The dead inhabit their silent towns.

 

Now the living surround the Eastern capital.

Now the dead surround the Western hills.

 

Though inseparable,

The living and the dead

No longer know each other.

In moments of joy,

They do not remember the other,

In bitterness,

They do not long for one another. 

                                                                                                                                                                                               

II                                            

 

The cold passes reluctantly from the earth and the retreating mists reveal an army stretched out for miles on the hills, asleep. A watery sun rises slowly and the landscape changes from pale gray to green. The army stirs. It trembles at the whispers of rumor. It casts its eyes upon the roads.                                                                            

III

 

With a groan, I start from sleep.

All the earth is on the march to war.

The rulers have commanded it.                                                               

 

                                                *

 

Heaven is high and far away.

The king’s business never ends.

I cannot stay to plant my crops

How will my parents and my children live?

Heaven is high and far away.

The earth below must always march to war.

 

When will it end?

                                                                                     

                                                *

 

We pray for a sovereign.

We pray the sacrifices he commands

Bring peace.

                                                         

Yet we long for home.

In what month will we return?                                                               

No breeze stirs.

We must wait.

I look down the highway

And my heart is blank.                                                                                                         

                                                *

 

Oh bright Heaven high above,

Shining on the earth below,

How our westward march

Has brought us to the empty plains

 

We have suffered cold and heat.

Oh the aching of an empty heart

Oh the poisons of bitterness.

Thinking of the ones who raised us,

My tears fall like rain in the sadness of my heart.

 

Though I long for life and home,

I cannot turn back.

Warfare drags me on.                                                                     

 

IV

 

The sweat of waiting, even in the silent cold; even those who can’t stop talking, each is frozen in his own thoughts, frozen, choking in the rank smell of fear and dust.

 

Now slowly, like a moving flood-gate,

Iron scraping iron,

The great hinge of battle opens.

 

At the shout of command, there is no longer any time. Doubts dissolve in the sheer mass charge: arms taut, weapons held in front. legs pumping, screaming war cries.

 

Wildly, we shout:

 

Seu Lhawang Damsang ride with me.

Tungsen Karma keep me strong.

Nyengen Deva be my shield.

Shinje Chogyal do not fail me.

Seu Thuchen Mongpa guide my arm.

 

Enemies rise up like weeds before us. They are cut down. Again they rise. Again we cut them down. The long day’s work of killing has begun.

 

Charging, shouting, scrambling wildly down the hillside, slashing right and left amid the hail of arrows and bullets,

 

then, the clear bitter smell of crushed leaves and blood, the exhilaration of running, and cold air pouring through nostrils.

 

everything is desperately alive, and it is impossible to imagine this torrent of life can ever end.

                                               

V

 

A bow string snaps,

Suddenly nothing moves.

The world swirls around us in a dazzling whirlwind.

At its center, time stops.

 

The white disc of a single cloud

Hovers in the pale sky.

 

Flocks of sparrows rise and wheel.

 

Red, yellow and black banners flutter.

Sunlight glitters

On steel blades and spear points.

 

Sword arms raised, mouths gaping,

Soldiers freeze.

An arrow stops in mid flight.

 

VI

 

Now shining like diamonds in the air

The gods of war hear our cry.

 

They descend in a circle of hard light,

Seated on their steeds of wind,

Indifferent to all obstacles and enemies.

 

Radiant

They do not waver.

 

While everything around them now erupts

In wave on wave of sundered flesh and horror:

 

Soldiers forget their names, their home

They charge on as if there were no death.

They do not think.

They throw themselves onto the red teeth of war.

 

And Now

The living and the dead

Part.

 

The world of the living bursts open.                          

The world of the dead falls into the black earth.

 

VIII

 

Now amongst the living

There is, for a moment, exhilaration.

There is lawless abandon.

Now, there is, for a moment, feasting, drinking, delirium.

No limit can be placed on the desire to live.

 

The war gods, sated, return to their abodes.

 

Then behind us there is silence                                                     

Behind us, there are the dead.

 

They rest in the soft earth on the hills

They, in tens of thousands,

The victors and the vanquished.

 

They have entered the dark world.

They are cut off from the living,

Their tomb is sealed.                                         

 

In their joy, they do not remember one another,

In their bitterness they do not long for one another. 

 

Beneath a hard and barren sun,                                           

I climb the ridge of a high mountain

Alone to wander home.

 

In passing, I look down on the capital.

 

Its walls are broken,

Its palaces and houses burnt to ash.

Its royal names effaced from looted tombs,

Family homes and gravestones now in ruins

No hearth fires, no offerings

A thousand miles without chimney smoke.

 

There is no one,

No trees, no grass,

No birds, nor birdsong.

 

There is silence.

 

I have been away too long.

I cannot find a pathway back

Where I, my parents, wife, my children

Lived our lives.

 

There are no shadows.

Memories fade.

There is no path

Nor in my heart.

 

Gone.

 

I turn inward.

Alive or dead,

I can no longer say.

                                                                                                         

 

VII

 

In the torrent of existing,

In the fires of endless war,

We have touched

The all-consuming heart.

 

The blazing sky embraces the dark earth.

 

Our eyes are scorched.

We are immobile.

 

Words have no meaning.

 

Parted,

The living and the dead

Hold the secret of fleeting love.

 

They do not know peace.

 

 

 

Douglas Penick was a research associate at the Museum of Modern Art, wrote the libretti King Gesar (Sony CD) and Ashoka’s Dream  (Santa Fe Opera), and the text for the National Film Board of Canada’s 2 part series THE BOOK OF THE DEAD (Leonard Cohen, narrator). A grant from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry  supported his work on three book-length episodes from the Gesar of Ling epic (Crossings on a Bridge of Light, Warrior Song of King Gesar and The Brilliance of Naked Mind).Shorter work has appeared in Cahiers de L’Herne, Agni, Chicago Quarterly, New England Quarterly, Tricycle and Kyoto Journal among others . His novel about Ming ChIna, A Journey of The North Star was published by Publerati in 2012. Dreamers and Their Shadows came out in 2013. Hammer & Anvil Books has just published From The Empire of Fragments, a collection focusing on the lives of the culturally displaced.