George Oppen

Originally titled this post "(Gettin' It Poppin' With) George Oppen," but that felt in poor taste. Perhaps I am still hung up on the idea of starting a band called Billion Carlos Billions. Anyway, this is from Oppen's skullcrusher (in some circles they call this a magnum opus), "Of Being Numerous."


14


I cannot even now
Altogether disengage myself
From those men

With whom I stood in emplacements, in mess tents,
In hospitals and sheds and hid in the gullies
Of blasted roads in a ruined country,

Among them many men
More capable than I&mdash

Muykut and a sergeant
Named Healy,
That lieutenant also&mdash

How forget that? How talk
Distantly of 'The People'

Who are that force
Within the walls
of cities

Wherein their cars

Echo like history
Down walled avenues
In which one cannot speak.