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| Hemingway at his machine gun: mitrailleuse |
MITRAIGLIATRICE
The mills
of the gods grind slowly;
But this
mill
Chatters
in mechanical staccato.
Ugly
short infantry of the mind,
Advancing
over difficult terrain,
Make this
Corona
Their
mitrailleuse.
ALONG WITH YOUTH
A
porcupine skin,
Stiff
with bad tanning,
It must
have ended somewhere.
Stuffed
horned owl
Pompous
Yellow
eyed;
Chuck-wills-widow
on a biassed twig
Sooted
with dust.
Piles of
old magazines,
Drawers
of boy's letters
And the
line of love
They must
have ended somewhere.
Yesterday's
Tribune is gone
Along
with youth
And the
canoe that went to pieces on the beach
The year
of the big storm
When the
hotel burned down
At Seney.
Michigan.
CHAMPS D'HONNEUR
Soldiers
never do die well;
Crosses
mark the places,
Wooden
crosses where they fell,
Stuck
above their faces.
Soldiers
pitch and cough and twitch—
All the world roars red and black;
Soldiers
smother in a ditch,
Choking through the whole attack.
ROOSEVELT
Workingmen
believed
He busted
trusts,
And put
his picture in their windows.
"What
he'd have done in France!"
They
said.
Perhaps
he would—
He could
have died
Perhaps,
Though
generals rarely die except in bed,
As he did
finally.
And all
the legends that he started in his life
Live on
and prosper,
Unhampered
now by his existence.
RIPARTO D'ASSALTO
Drummed
their boots on the camion floor,
Hob-nailed
boots on the camion floor.
Sergeants
stiff,
Corporals
sore.
Lieutenants
thought of a Mestre whore—
Warm and
soft and sleep whore,
Cozy,
warm and lovely whore;
Damned
cold, bitter, rotten ride,
Winding
road up the Grappa side.
Arditi on
benches stiff and cold,
Pride of
their country stiff and cold,
Bristly
faces, dirty hides—
Infantry
marches, Arditi rides.
Grey,
cold, bitter, sullen ride—
To splintered
pines on the Grappa side
At
Asalone, where the truck-load died.
OILY WEATHER
The sea
desires deep hulls—
It swells
and rolls.
The screw
churns a throb—
Driving,
throbbing, progressing.
The sea
rolls with love
Surging,
caressing,
Undulating
its great loving belly.
The sea
is big and old—
Throbbing
ships scorn it.
CAPTIVES
Some came
in chains
Unrepentent
but tired.
Too tired
but to stumble.
Thinking
and hating were finished
Thinking
and fighting were finished
Retreated
and hoping were finished.
Cures thus
a long campaign,
Making
death easy.
MONTPARNASSE
There are
never any suicides in the quarter among people one knows
No
successful suicides.
A Chinese
boy kills himself and is dead.
(they
continue to place his mail in the letter rack at the Dome)
A
Norwegian boy kills himself and is dead.
(no one
knows where the other Norwegian boy has gone)
They find
a model dead
alone in
bed and very dead.
(it made
almost unbearable trouble for the concierge)
Sweet
oil, the white of eggs, mustard and water, soap suds
and
stomach pumps rescue the people one knows.
Every
afternoon the people one knows can he found at the café.
Editor’s
note:
The poems (above) are reposted
from “Three Stories and Ten Poems,” Privately published in a run of 300 copies
by Robert McAlmon's "Contact Publishing" in Paris (Summer 1923).
From Wikipedia: According to a
collector, "Mitraigliatrice", "Oily Weather",
"Roosevelt", "Champs de Honneur", "Riparto di
Assalto" and "Chapter Heading" were first published in January
1923 in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse.
The U.S. copyrights for all the
individual works, if ever made, were not renewed. Hemingway was not eligible to
have his copyright restored for all but the first six aforementioned works in
the U.S. according to the work being subject to French copyright law and the
URAA restoring such works in general, because Hemingway was a U.S. citizen.
Thus all the works are in the
public domain in the U.S., but not in France and in countries that follow the
Berne Convention (until 2031), nor in countries that have copyright duration of
longer than 54 years after the author's death.
Above works entered the public domain in 1952.
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