Wartime Verses and Peacetime Sequel

AND I in the wide fields of air
Must keep with him my rendezvous.
It may be I shall meet him there
When clouds, like sheep, drift slowly through
The pathless meadows of the sky,
And their cool shadows move beneath . . .
I have a rendezvous with Death
Some summer noon of white and blue.

Oh, he must seek me far and wide
And track me at his fleetest pace,
For there are lonely depths in space:
Solitudes where I may hide,
Laughing at him when he has gone
On a false scent, with laboring breath . . .
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
Over Verdun as night comes on.

Perhaps, some autumn afternoon,
Of cloudless skies, far in the blue,
Beneath a ghostly waning moon,
I shall be flying without care
Or thought of war, or thought of death;
Unwarned that he is coming, too,
Swift to his well-planned rendezvous,
Until I hear, with darkening brain:
‘Well met! We shall not meet again.’

READER, lest the lines foregoing
Start belated tears to flowing;
Lest you, sighing, think: ‘How sad!
Dead long since, no doubt, poor lad! His upgathered bones with those
Lying now in countless rows
On the battlefields of France’ —
Sheepishly I now advance
To as sheepishly amend them:
To confess’t was I who penned them.

I did not meet him overseas.
Twice he made me fan the breeze:
Once, near Soissons, on the Aisne.
(That was near enough!) Again
Hard by Pagny-sur-Moselle;
I remember, as I fell.
Thinking: ‘This is surely it!’
But it was n’t. When I’d hit
I was still extant, and Death
Hastened on, ‘with laboring breath.’

Laboring breath indeed! Not so.
I know, now, why he let me go.
Lord! That I was once so vain
As to think me worth the pain
Of a chase! And once so proud
As to say (or write) aloud
That the chase would be a chase
Worthy of his fleetest pace!
Shamefully I hang my head.
This is what he must have said:

‘What? A rendezvous with me, sir?
Very well; I quite agree, sir.
Meanwhile, will you kindly wait
Till I choose to set a date?
Just at present I am — sorry! —
After rather better quarry.
You may thumb your nose at me?
Why, you wretched little flea!
If I wanted to I’d flick you
Out of time so blessed quick, you
Would be nothing, even less,
Nothing save a nasty mess
On the ground. And now, adieu.
Meanwhile, live. I wish you to.
Mine is ‘labored breath’ you say?
Good! Then I shall come that way.
I shall labor on your trail
Slower than the slowest snail.’

Thus he spoke. The years creep by,
And there was I and here am I!
But, alas! when I compare
The I of ‘here’ with ‘over there,’ I mutter: ‘If that man was me
Can this present wreck be he
Who once sailed the skyey main
In a single-seater plane?’

To which my shaving glass replies:
‘There are various kinds of I’s.’

Meanwhile, still he laboreth,
Anything but short of breath.
He is taking me by inches,
Little grabs, and jabs, and pinches,
And each morning when I wake
Less remains for him to take.
Gone is youth, adventure, glory;
I am middle-aged and hoary.
Of flying I no longer talk:
It’s all that I can do to walk!
I dare not look into the sky
For thinking of the days gone by;
I keep my eyes upon the ground,
And if, perchance, I hear the sound,
The faint, far-off, familiar drone
Of a passing plane, I groan
And press a hand to either ear
That I may no longer hear.

On he comes, ‘with laboring breath’ . . .
(That much of what I wrote was true),
But not where clouds drift slowly through
The pathless meadows of the sky
And their cool shadows move beneath;
I have a rendezvous with Death;
I know it well. I hear his tread.
I have a rendezvous with Death,
Propped up with pillows, in a bed!
And when we’ve met, someone will say:
‘I hear old Chose has passed away.’

Oil, the everlasting shame
Of a rendezvous so tame!

Yet, when I know that he has come,
Heaven grant me strength to thumb
My nose at him before he take me!
Let not my courage then forsake me!
Let me have the sand to wag
A last defiance, full of brag.