| THE DEATH OF THE BALL TURRET GUNNER From my mother's sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. Randall Jarrell (1914 - 1965) IN THE GARDEN In the garden there strayed A beautiful maid As fair as the flowers of the morn; The first hour of her life She was made a man's wife And was buried before she was born. Anonymous DESIGN I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth -- Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches' broth -- A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite. What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall? -- If design govern in a thing so small. Robert Frost (1874 - 1963) |