by Tom Sheehan

The day had gone over hill, but that still, blue light remained,

cut with a gray edge, catching corners rice paddies lean out of.

In the serious blue brilliance of battle they’d become comrades

becoming friends, just Walko and Williamson and Sheehan

sitting in the night drinking beer cooled by Imjin River waters

in August of ‘51 in Korea.

Three men drably clad,

                                    but clad in the rags of war.

Stars hung pensive neon. Mountain-cool silences were being earned,

hungers absolved, a ponderous god talked to. Above silences,

the ponderous god’s weighty as clouds, elusive as soot on wind,

yields promises. They used church keys to tap cans, lapped up

silence rich as missing salt, fused their backbones to good earth

in a ritual old as labor itself,

                                    these men clad in the rags of war.

Such an August night gives itself away, tells tales, slays the rose

in reeling carnage, murders sleep, sucks moisture out of Mother Earth,

fires hardpan, sometimes does not die itself just before dawn,

makes strangers in one’s selves,

                                    those who wear the rags of war.

They had been strangers beside each other, caught in the crush

of tracer night and starred flanks, accidents of men drinking beer

cooled in the bloody waters where brothers roam forever, warriors come

to that place by fantastic voyages, carried by generations

of the persecuted or the adventurous, carried in sperm body, dropped

in the spawning, fruiting womb of America,

                                    and born to wear the rags of war.

Walko, reincarnate of the Central European, come of land lovers

and those who scatter grain seed, bones like logs, wrists strong

as axle trees, fair and blue-eyed, prankster, ventriloquist who talked

off mountainside, rumormonger for fun, heart of the hunter,

hide of the herd, apt killer,

                                    born to wear the rags of war.

Williamson, faceless in the night, black set on black,

only teeth like high piano keys, eyes that captured stars,

fine nose got from Rome through rape or slave bed unknown

generations back, was cornerback tough, graceful as ballet dancer

(Walko’s opposite), hands that touched his rifle the way a woman’s

touched, or a doll, or one’s fitful child caught in fever clutch,

came sperm-tossed across the cold Atlantic, some elder Virginia-

bound bound in chains, the Congo Kid come home,

the Congo Kid, alas, alas,

                                    born to wear the rags of war.

Sheehan, reluctant at trigger-pull, dreamer, told deep lies

with dramatic ease, entertainer who wore shining inward a sum

of ghosts forever from the cairns had fled; heard myths

and the promises in earth and words of songs he knew he never knew,

carried scars vaguely known as his own, shared his self with saint

and sinner, proved pregnable to body force,

                                    but born to wear the rags of war

——Walko: We lost the farm. Someone stole it. My father

loved the fields, sweating. He watched grass grow by starlight,

the moon slice at new leaves. The mill’s where he went for work,

in the crucible, drawing on the green vapor, right in the heat of it,

the miserable heat. My mother said he started dying the first day.

It wasn’t the heat or green vapor did it, just going off to the mill,

grassless, tight in. The system took him. He wanted to help.

It took him, killed him a little each day, just smothered him.

I kill easy. Memory does it. I was born for this, to wear

these rags. The system gives, then takes away. I’ll never

 go piecemeal like my father.

                                    These rags are my last home.

——Williamson: Know why I’m here? I’m from North Ca’lina,

sixteen and big and wear size fifteen shoes and my town

drafted me ‘stead of a white boy. Chaplain says he git me home.

Shit! Be dead before then. Used to hunt home, had to eat

what was fun runnin’ down. Brother shot my sister

and a white boy in the woods. Caught them skinnin’ it up

against a tree, run home and kissed Momma goodbye,

give me his gun. Ten years, no word. Momma cries about

both them all night. Can’t remember my brother’s face.

Even my sister’s. Can feel his gun, though, right here

in my hands, long and smooth and all honey touch. Squirrel’s

left eye never too far away for that good old gun.

Them white men back home know how good I am, and send me here,

put these rags on me. Two wrongs! Send me too young

and don’t send my gun with me. I’m goin’ to fix it all up,

gettin’ home too. They don’t think I’m coming back,

them white men. They be nervous when I get back, me and that

good old gun my brother give me,

                                    and my rags of war.

——Sheehan: Stories are my food. I live and lust on them.

Spirits abound in the family, indelible eidolons; the O’Siodhachain

and the O’Sheehaughn carved a myth. I wear their scars in my soul,

know the music that ran over them in lifetimes, songs’ words,

and strangers that are not strangers: Muse Devon abides with me,

moves in the blood and bag of my heart, whispers tonight:

Corimin is in my root cell, oh bright beauty of all

that has come upon me, chariot of cheer, carriage of Cork

where the graves are, where my visit found the root

of the root cell—Johnny Igoe at ten running ahead

of the famine that took brothers and sisters, lay father down;

sick in the hold of ghostly ship I have seen from high rock

on Cork’s coast, in the hold heard the myths and music

he would spell all his life, remembering hunger and being alone

and brothers and sisters and father gone and mother

praying for him as he knelt beside her bed that hard morning

when Ireland went away to the stern. I know that terror

of hers last touching his face. Pendalcon’s grace

comes on us all at the end. Johnny Igoe came alone at ten

and made his way across Columbia, got my mother who got me

and told me when I was twelve that one day Columbia

would need my hand and I must give.  And tonight I say,

“Columbia, I am here with my hands

and with my rags of war.”

I came home alone. And they are my brothers.

          Walko is my brother. Williamson is my brother.

             Muse Devon is my brother. Corimin is my brother.

                Pendalcon is my brother.

                    God is my brother.

          I am a brother to all who are dead,

                                    we all wear the rags of war.  

Note:

Born to Wear the Rags of War is not the first piece of Tom Sheehan’s work published by Eastlit. His previous work includes:

• Old Man With a Broken Walking Stick in the January 2013 issue of Eastlit.
• The Pearl Necklace published in the March 2013 issue of Eastlit.
• At the Lake published in the May 2013 issue of Eastlit.
• The Soul of Shiloh 2 published in the July issue of Eastlit.