1919

The Camera Eye (37)

alphabetically according to rank tapped out with two cold index fingers on the company Corona Allots Class A & B Ins prem C & D

Atten — SHUN snap to the hooks and eyes at my throat constricting the adamsapple bringing together the US and the Caduceus

At Ease

outside they’re drilling in the purple drizzle of a winter afternoon in Ferrières en Gatinais, Abbaye founded by Clovis over the skeletons of three disciples of nôtre seigneur Jésus-Christ 3rd Lib Loan Sec of Treas Altian Politian and Hermatian 4th Lib Loan Sec of Treas must be on CL E or other form Q.M.C. 38 now it’s raining hard and the gutters gurgle there’s tinkling from all the little glassgreen streams Alcuin was prior once and millwheels grind behind the mossed stone walls and Clodhilde and Clodomir were buried here

promotions only marked under gains drowsily clacked out on the rusteaten Corona in the cantonment of O’Reilly’s Travelling Circus alone except for the undertaker soldiering in his bunk and the dry hack of the guy that has TB that the MO was never sober enough to examine

Iodine will make you happy

Iodine will make you well

fourthirty the pass comes alive among the CC pills in my pocket

the acting QM Sarge and the Topkicker go out through the gate of USAAS base camp in their slickers in the lamplit rain and make their way without a cent in their OD to the Cheval Blanc where by chevrons and parleyvooing they bum drinks and omelettes avec pommes frites and kid applecheeked Madeleine may wee

in the dark hallway to the back room the boys are lined up waiting to get in to the girl in black from out of town to drop ten francs and hurry to the propho station sol viol sk not L D viol Go 41/14 rd sent S C M

outside it’s raining on the cobbled town inside we drink vin rouge parlezvous froglegs may wee couchez avec and the old territorial at the next table drinks illegal pernod and remarks Toute est bien fait dans la nature à la votre aux Americains

Après la guerre finee

Back to the States for me

Dans la mort il n’y a rien de terrible Quant on va mourir on pense à tout mais vite

the first day in the year dismissed after rollcall I went walking with a fellow from Philadelphia along the purple wintryrutted roads under the purple embroidery of the pleached trees full of rooks cackling overhead over the ruddier hills to a village we’re going to walk a long way get good wine full of Merovingian names millwheels glassgreen streams where the water gurgles out of old stone gargoyles Madeleine’s red apples the smell of beech leaves we’re going to drink wine the boy from Philadelphia’s got beaucoup jack wintry purpler wine the sun breaks out through the clouds on the first day in the year

in the first village

we stop in our tracks

to look at a waxwork

the old man has shot the pretty peasant girl who looks like Madeleine but younger she lies there shot in the left breast in the blood in the ruts of the road pretty and plump as a little quail

The old man then took off one shoe and put the shotgun under his chin pulled the trigger with his toe and blew the top of his head off we stand looking at the bare foot and the shoe and the foot in the shoe and the shot girl and the old man with a gunnysack over his head and the dirty bare toe he pulled the trigger with Faut pas toucher until the commissaire comes procès verbale

on this first day

of the year the sun

is shining