War Poem

He takes the clock in his fist.
Sirens cover the laughter
on the other side of the river.
The air limps over the field.
Squadrons loom through the marsh fog
and search beams strip the sky
of long remnants of light.
His other hand  cuts out the springs,
and time scatters, like pennies
from a child's piggy bank,
the coins dark as scabs.
The grunts rush across the meadows.
If only it were a question of burying
the numb memory of the fever,
but not quite. On the contrary.
It is the command of the monarch,
the chrysalis in the congress of iron,
failed drugs, mutant diseases,
minds picking souls from the gardens like daffodils,
and the curling slab of a history book
burning in a bowl on the ice
in the winter twilight.
History is peculiar. It seems unbearable,
and is all we are sure to leave behind.
Here are the words you left.
They burn under history like a pair of hands.