Hi Gary,
I guess you have to have white hair and a few wrinkles to remember first 
wondering where the flowers
had gone!
At times in this I find myself stumbling over the rhythm as a stanza 
progresses. I mean the first one seems to establish a smooth regular use of 
rhythm all the way through it... Like, as the title says, it's not a quiet, 
soundless, kind of read, it's a song... but I can't get my mouth to fit the 
last line of the second stanza into the same rhythm! (the line just above it 
seemed a bit of a squeeze as well!)
It could be that you're fragmenting the rhythm purposefully, tho. (But the 
fragmentation doesn't seem to increase stanza by stanza - it seems to flow 
slightly easier in some nearer the end than in the others in the middle.)
And should the word "fatigue" be plural? ie "combat fatigues" - which isn't 
a statement, or short sentence, but a description of trousers and a jacket.
The lines at the end, though, are dazzlers!
Bob


>From: Gary Blankenship <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 10:43:51 -0700
>
>An Army of None:  A Protest Song for the Next Millennium
>
>
>
>Where does the crow cower
>
>when cluster bombs burst?
>
>Where the peacock roost?
>
>Dog, badger, goat, perch?
>
>
>
>Where does the hare hide
>
>when  bombardments begin,
>
>trapped in double-wired hutches
>
>unable to chew to freedom?
>
>
>
>Where does the soldier sleep
>
>when bullets fly, orange blossoms
>
>shredded as tracers tear
>
>through jungle and fatigue alike?
>
>
>
>Where does the sailor rest
>
>when rug markets are traps
>
>and the bars of Subic are miles
>
>further away than Mother's tears?
>
>
>
>Where does the robin nest,
>
>the oyster bed, clam burrow?
>
>Where is the camel buried
>
>when war never ends?
>
>
>
>Where are the songs of flowers
>
>long buried under white stones?
>
>
>
>
>
>IF MY MAIL BOUNCES, MAIL [log in to unmask] AS AN ALTERNATIVE.....The 
>homepage on hold until ???--- Writer's Hood at 
>http://www.writershood.com/.....Check out the Auden contest.  Poets for 
>Peace.... ˇPoemas sí, balas no!

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