I write this, Lindsay, for your later time;

In the spring of 1944, before

Invasion of the European lands,

And on the day Rome falls. I write, as one

Too old and too preoccupied to go,

To tell you what it was not to be there

But to be here where you as a small boy

Are too young even to know what we await.

Written for reading in a public place

Perhaps even after the terror has begun,

After that, my son, this is for you -

My testament of one spring but not my will.

No man wills hell, yet all inherit it

At one time or another; and in my time

All were brought up in hell because too many

Possessing fire that amiably warmed them

Did not mind how may more it burned,

Or see how fire grown wide and tall with lust

Would not leave alone even its keepers.

So this spring we make the final gesture

Out of deliberate necessity:

Fight fire with fire. The supposition is,

Cure to extinguish theirs. And it may be

If you grow up into a fairer country,

Then because of this; though maybe not

I do not know and I cannot predict

Being one concerned only with what is real -

A poet, if your generation please.

I only know a flame marches toward Europe

To meet another there and that what matters,

Now both are loosed, is what remains after

Both of them go out, if both go out.

I know that this is not a torch we bear

Though some men say it is, as good men said

Twenty-five years ago this was the torch

But no, this is the flag of hell

This is breath of death, flame without light.

Deliverance - lux et veritas - may lift

Its fiery staff from this: It is not this.

Honor, dishonor marry every day

Meaning to get them honorable

I question this in nations or in people.

The black strain, the inheritance, continues

Since no man gelds himself; and on all sides

Truth embarrasses all champions' strength -

They tend to leave a little by the way,

Find that going easy they go farther.

Truth is not a weapon but a light;

It does not fight; it is; only hope,

My son, is fighting men will come to it

In terrible extremity, and know it.

Alas, it shines best in the darkest hour

But in the glaze of victory seems to fade.

All espouse more affable influence -

Make no mistake: winners and losers too -

Beget again our repetitious world,

That damned, magnificent monstrosity,

Its marvelous muscles and its hidden cancer.

If only those who pray this second morning

On which I write this verse, now overnight

Invasion has begun, would know enough

What to pray for and to whom to pray.

On which I write this verse, now overnight

Invasion has begun, would know enough

What to pray for and to whom to pray.

But that will do for that. I speak of spring

Which came this year as hesitant as ever

Yet like a virgin half-bespelled, once touched,

Opened with such passionate responses

We were ourselves half-frightened, all amazed,

And said it never was like this before.

Flowers beyond flowers over flowers

All the swift extravagance of spring

Had us drunken; desire, satiety

So mixed that we were numb and might have said

That if this was our last spring it embraced

More than we remembered of all springs

And justified the earth, mankind aside.

Maybe this is the spring you will remember

Now you are four years old, although of course

You will not know what spring you remember.

Let me put down, for you to read some time,

You helped me plant pansies and lettuce, both,

And were most diligent and over-generous

Watering them at evening, and very proud.

This June I saw you in a field of daisies

Deep as your eyes - only your blond mop showing

Above the white and gold; and I daresay

This is the depth you will remember daisies

All your life, disturbed in June's hot smell

On shallower fields in shorter afternoons.

You liked to walk about the yard and prod

Me into naming names: peony - which

I called pe-o-ny when I was a child -

Poppy, iris, robin, lady-bug, tulip,

Lilac, snow-ball, hyacinth, bleeding -heart.

Worm you knew. And this was the spring

You came holding out buttercups to me;

I struck them from my hands and turned away

From all that shining which was partly flowers.

I write this, though they will not understand

Who hears me read it; but whether you and I

Shall sometime understand it, haunts me too.

Will you forgive me, knowing that I loved you?

Will I forgive you for loving me?

Can we undo the ancestral Protestant

And in a spring that blossomed on a red wall

Acknowledge purgatory and hope for heaven?

Lives like nations break, but if for love

Is what we have to know after the battle.

This is the spring you ordered dug a foxhole,

Naming it; and I dug it for you.

Dirty and happy you lay down in it,

Above a stick you made machine gun sounds,

That vicious rivetting we did not know

Which is the new yell of your generation.

Otherwise I recognize the same

Recurrent calls of comradeship and vengeance

And think how unalterably as seasons

Children repeat the patterns of their games,

Are somehow nearer crocuses and sparrows.

Then us adult. That you may go on,

Elsewhere we slay children accidentally;

Send up to God the cry of innocent blood.

Through this winter till the tide of spring

Turned dark toward harvest, I amassed

A personal journal into which I wrote

For myself in a later time, for you

Still later maybe, what I thought and saw

What I heard and what I hoped to know.

How it was surviving in this time,

To be alive but not so much as those

Grown old enough for death or young enough.

The story of the man of wealth and power

Whose funeral directions, carried out,

Held a friend alone for witness while

Barrels of lime were poured into his grave

Upon his open coffin. He had been

A great lover of women and of power.

The writer jutting his noble head and asking

Does ever an American field look loved?'

The librarian wanting his earlier fame.

The painter saying 'If you believe the worst

Of people, generally it proves true.

The ancient lady saying 'I have lived

Through four great wars. My father, born

In eighteen-hundred-one, along with Byron

Fought for Greece. When I was a child

My mother wrote that hymn, "Mine eyes have seen

The glory of the coming of the Lord."

Will you have lunch with me some day in Newport?'

The Negro girl speaking of her life,

Speaking it in power, speaking it

With pride for so much larger than her life;

I said 'War is a good time for bad poets,

But you have found a way even in this hour

For keeping dignity and definition.'

A woman's letter kept saying 'If you fall

Expression of emotion, in a while

You fail emotional experience;'

Although she did not know she wrote in red

Across my mirror, Lindsay; and I raged

Day after day upon my secret pages,

Put down obscene, unprintable, all that was

Hidden in the doing, not even done.

And why? The girl saying 'I would have

You face your life in simple nakedness.

I know that this is what you have not done,

And if you do not do it you will die.'

Time and time and time and time.

Let me see your face. And I will look

And think as all men looking at their sons

Think beyond words, staring at radiance.

Generation after generation

This is what we slay - as though we had

Imagined vengeful gods, invented altars

For sacrifice, although our sons were real.

And never in the lamb produced in time;

And never in the pouring blood rewarded;

Dawn is dark as ever; if glory shone

It went out with the sons: survivors are

Those knowing how to live with dead hearts.

Unsullied April light - this radiance -

That from our loins, as surely as all else

That springs from earth, is the true child of earth,

This intention or miraculous accident:

What is it that we cannot keep? What is it

That is too natural and pure for us?

What is it we must cripple, kill, deny?

What innocence too naked to be known?

Stand in the sun and let me see your face.

You cannot stand do far away from me

But that my shadow falls upon you still.

You run across the field but calling back

Begging me to follow; if I turn

And cannot follow, in a moment you -

I know - will turn again and run to me.

By what long preservations and escapes

We have arrived here, both reluctant births;

And for what do I stand astride your morning

But to remember thus the day begins,

That there are conflagrations that are flowers

Meadow into meadow where a child

Can walk and not be harmed a little while.

Perhaps I shall not fail you more than this

Shall fail you, as it must; not any more

Than I could recompense you for this hour

In which by being here you bring back,

Reminding me, though hell burn everywhere,

This utterance, this hope, this seeming purpose

Persists, and that the resurrected life

No matter what I do shines on your face,