Poetry

TANK

After Pierre Jean Jouve

my martian machine
— double-jawed tower —
with your fiery skull
where lives man's calculus

from your sides, middle and back crackle shrapnel,
shells, life-devouring bullets,

you march over earth,
upon the living, dying and dead,
compress the trench beneath your jounce
as you'd close two sides of a wound,

blind beast
rampant in the battle's blast,
beyond even the vanguard;

— inside,
the heroes,
padded up to the nines,
hurling at the walls, smashing their courses;
firing and killing on all sides,
burnt by the torrid heat of engines,
deafened by the din of exploding iron:
living their last day

here is the child of their divine-brain
here the clarity of their bright world

Martin Malone