Private Papers

differently. Tabulate, Soldier, appreciate
all the changes in your changed estate:
all the castes — for such they be — in this
mushroom hierarchy. Estimate your chances. . . —
He who dances the best at gun point
gets a rating (arm-stripes).
He who studies while dancing
becomes an officer (bars or stars).
But concede them everything, the potentates.
Soldier, the care they take of you is taken
from you too. Your responsibility
begins and ends with a command:
the rest is luxury. . . .
So in barracks or at the Post Exchange
though complaint shake the rafters —
after all is said (with profanity) you have
food, bed, and your good companions.
Their quaint amusements all are yours;
their women (occasionally); their liquor
(usually) to be shared. . . .
Caste, women, drink, and obscenity; these
are the stock in trade, ready-made language
of the untouchables. The snobbery
based on them — as exacting as any.
(Yet of a wonderful simplicity.)
And not many times will you
alone, suddenly and late,
get no reply from the juke box.

or someone like him. He wears a suit
of most unlikely green exactly like a million.
Straight as a gun he is, the features safety-locked. . . .
Where have I seen him before?
That was another world. (I forget
what I was doing there.) He appeared
the ordinary run of man, one of a crowd.
How blind! How blind! I, in that other world.
Under this olive drab, this trigger tension,
are things no other world made clear. . . .
Our lives are not our own to lead.
Our strength is not our own, nor our fatigue.
Looking about me at the end of day,
opium-weary, my brightened brain
inhabits the other bodies where they lie. . . .
Look close, and see the sharp, sad Jew;
mother’s spoiled darling; the inveterate Boy Scout.
Oh, see the bewildered; the embittered;
and the practical joker. The glutton; prig;
boot-licker; gold-bricker — all
one tired body whose every part cries out.
Still come near:
Yes, someone you know is here.

a male community; unlike Lhasa, profane;
but a murmuring city, a fortified dovecote;
it rises, serried, to the Living Buddha’s quarters;
and, though he’s not in residence, nightly
we have the Philosopher in the Latrine. . . .

What did he say? And what did he mean?
He said (I quote): A soldier,
victim of rumor, eaten by appetite,
must, by the very humors that blended
his fear with his desire, be mended.
Meaning: “Don’t stick your neck out.”
And he said (I quote): Forces
outside ourselves govern us, only until the
force within, rather than meet defeat, extends.
Meaning: “They can’t make you do anything
but they can make you wish you had!”
And he said (I quote): Do not become
attached — not even to detachment. One
by one break all your habits, then
break your pride in breaking them.
As you’ve found: to be on the inside
is profoundly easy, once you’re there.
Don’t count on that. There is no outside
or in, where you are going. (All this he said
sitting there naked; the prayer wheels turning,
the conches blowing from roof-top to roof-top.)
You dare not love. Prepare to
give up everything that you do — at
a moment’s notice. In combat
two make a target. Meaning:
“If you have a friend, stay away from him.”
(Butter-lamps guttering in the night-wind.)

simple and strong and young be a soldier?
Not any one, these given. These denied —
consider the use of trying.
None but would be strong. Else wronging
himself. And simplicity? It becomes
the human animal like a ribbon decoration.
The catch is “young.” Who really
would relive the tentative years! They —
passed. Nor — Young Soldier, forgive me —
will tomorrow’s tragedy be the last.
But, making your memories
ever simpler and more strong— though the
world and paradise are lost: your war is won.