One very pleasant evening in September, directly after returning to New York from the Pacific, we dined with our friends and neighbors, the poet and his wife—the William Rose Benéts. Drawn out by sympathetic listeners, I talked of sights, sounds and scents of the Pacific, and took off in pantomime the awkward antics of the sea birds ashore, ending up by mimicking their cries. Naturally I spoke only of the war in generalities, trying to give a picture of harsh violence in soft, lazy climates.

A few days later, this poem arrived in the mail, with a short note saying, “Never tell one of those writer guys anything!” I reproduce it with much temerity, a stunning thing in a humble setting.

ARCHIPELAGO

Today we think of islands. . . .

“Yellow sand-spots,” the artist said.
“Sea that unbelievable parrot green. . .
and the goonies, the goody-birds, with their deafening
clack-gaggle    clattering racket    wide-wing-planing
always aloft    or braking for a landing!”

Specks the islands in the enormous flow
and welter of the lavish elements. . . .

It’s where the world ends
the place for jumping off
the Alexander Selkirk solitude. . .
wings of a dove . . . the sea-fowl in her nest . . .
Robinson Crusoe with his nanny-goat. . . .

And then the first apparent enemy hulls
rising beyond the sea line     the vibration
loudening fading of planes . . the far sea-battling
over the horizon by remote control. . . .

Crash of anti-aircraft     whine of torpedo-planes
assault like Midway     with their carriers swinging
to dodge the babies from our bomb-bay doors
Waterspouts like whales blowing    shot-silk
of sky and sea ripped by the flash and crash
and sound and flame. . .

                          Aloof the islands lie . . .
Wake    that the indomitable four hundred
leathernecks held and held for fourteen days. . . .
Midway     the Marshalls      spawn-swarm of Micronesia...
the Marianas that Magellan found . . .

Our Mindanao     Davao     musical names . . .
Luzon that held Bataan     Corregidor
names more than musketry and cannonade . . .
the spread of equatorial Melanesia
down to Australia and the Coral Sea. . . .

God made big islands too He made Australia. . . .

and the Carolines in never-ending June. . . .

But now it is beach-heads held or beach-heads taken.
Fleets now of monster birds with metal wings
and doom-filled bellies and all that endless ocean
studded with island ambush. . . .

                                 Over the surf
of the coral reef the goonies bank and veer
and crawk and cry     or shake their mating dance
awkwardly silhouetted against a sun
that rose in red once      and that sets in blood
slowly     slowly     under the long sea line. . .

Today
far islands that are very near.

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