Why the War? / John Gould Fletcher

from Modern Lamentations

Why the War?

They went to a field, and there lay two swords and two ploughshares;
And the first man said, “Plow, brother.”
But the second man frowned, and growled, tossing his head,
“We must kill each other.”

“The fruits of earth are beautiful — flowers and fruits,  
From the warm breast of earth, our mother.”
“Flower and fruit are for fools who want them, and beauty to boot!
We must kill each other.”

“Then let us strive, if you will, but only in peace;
In life let us conquer each other.”      
“Death settles the contest more quickly; one cut will release:
We must kill each other.”

“If death settles all, why then either fight or strive?
Let us sit down on the grass and weep for each other.”
“Because only so can the farce be played to the last:  
Draw, brother.”

~~

John Gould Fletcher (1886-1950)

from Poetry, December 1916

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

John Gould Fletcher biography

Rain in the Desert / John Gould Fletcher

from Arizona Poems:

Rain in the Desert

The huge red-buttressed mesa over yonder
Is merely a far-off temple where the sleepy sun is burning
Its altar fires of pinyon and toyon for the day.

The old priests sleep, white-shrouded;
Their pottery whistles lie beside them, the prayer-sticks closely feathered.
On every mummied face there glows a smile.

The sun is rolling slowly
Beneath the sluggish folds of the sky-serpents,
Coiling, uncoiling, blue black, sparked with fires.

The old dead priests
Feel in the thin dried earth that is heaped about them,
Above the smell of scorching, oozing pinyon,
The acrid smell of rain.

And now the showers
Surround the mesa like a troop of silver dancers:
Shaking their rattles, stamping, chanting, roaring,
Whirling, extinguishing the last red wisp of light.

~~~
John Gould Fletcher (1886-1960)
from The New Poetry: An anthology, 1917

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

John Gould Fletcher biography

Rain in the Desert" read by Alan Davis Drake for LibriVox. Courtesy Poems Cafe.

The Skaters / John Gould Fletcher

The Skaters

Black swallows swooping or gliding
In a flurry of entangled loops and curves;
The skaters skim over the frozen river.
And the grinding click of their skates as they impinge upon the surface
Is like the brushing together of thin wing-tips of silver.

---
John Gould Fletcher (1886-1950)
from Modern American Poetry, 1919

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

John Gould Fletcher biography

"The Skaters" read by David Stricklin. Courtesy Central Arkansas Library System.