There is in me the sound as of great singing,
the road running like a ribbon, romantic
as a movie screen; sunsets
stretching, vistavision, over the green fields.
And all this scenery is stirring, stirring
the ending of a Russian film —clasping
hands like clams, while the music
edges, a great Niagara Falls, over “The End . . .”
and the soldier has paid with his blood —
transfusing the Russian army — and the heroine
has become a nurse. Great causes
wiggle, oil-slick on my puddled brain.
Who, too, would not surge from his seat
crying “yes, yes, Patriotism!” and have a purpose
like a clumsy bee, woolly, thick-winged,
bundled up in his furry uniform?
Look! Even now he quivers with his humming,
bumbling with a dull blind passion
(one sting: he stabs and stiffens)
in his cupola of flowers.