Further Collected Poems is a compendium of poems that are in and out of form, in many modes and voices, simple and complex, hopeful and tragic.

The Anti -Hero

After the war, you lived with how I was:

A broken back, a whiskey attitude,

Lungs so abused I’ll die before you marry,

And then the flashbacks, screaming in the night.

But that at least was war, declared, supreme,

With honor, rationing and benefits.

These conflicts, doubtful and ephemeral,

Are hardly worth all that. Avoid them, son,

And study how it’s done, and see if you

By teaching history can make them stop.

For having seen, you cannot quite become

What I was then — heroic, stern, and dumb.