When turrets syndrome is the proper behavior

No wonder Wendell Berry reveres the poetry of Hayden Carruth (1921-2008). I got beaten up by the following poem of his this morning. Called "Waterloo," and written around 1995, it is one of the most startling and powerful anti-war poems I have ever read and explains my own frequent lapses into turrets syndrome tongues in public places because of it. Carruth, who drank as much as he wrote, felt compelled to inhospitably bad behavior on the subject of war and what he sensed was unconscionably serene or at least imperturbably stolid sufferance of it. This poem is about the carousing of conscience in the face of such sufferance and I implore you to share it with every friend and acquaintance you have. Maybe such sharing will help it become the world's swiftest and most successful chain (e)mail ever. If enough people receive this poem by noon, it will reach our old-style Republican president's desk by evening. Let this be the morning of the most ferocious anti-war arousal in history. Let us all stand united as "former citizens" of this, or any, warfare state.

David

P.S. I translate the phrase "un citoyen d'autrefois" as "a former citizen," but my French is bad. Some help here, any of the faithful few passersby.

WATERLOO

Overlooking the battlefield, on that grassy
ridge where the ladies and gentlemen of Brussels
brought their servants and picnic hampers
and card tables to watch, you could smell
the exploding gunpowder and hear shrieks
in the distance, you could see the brightly
uniformed bodies of men running and firing,
clashing their swords and falling,
and he became ill. He couldn't help it. His hands
trembled, his mouth trembled, he retched
and vomited over a picnic table, he tried to drink
from a bottle of champagne and spilled it
down the front of his shirt, he soiled his trousers.
It was unbelievable, atrocious. He felt worse
than he could say. He went from table to table,
seeking comfort and reassurance, he didn't know what.
The ladies in colorful dresses and huge hats,
the gentlemen in brilliantly tailored suits
were talking and smiling, looking through their
opera glasses, pointing here and there to explain
tactics and mark the approach of fresh legions
on either side. But they paid no attention
to him, they couldn't hear or see him,
as if he were invisible, un citoyen
d'autrefois. The smell thickened,
the stench choked him, and the screams
of the dying men and horses became
piercing and unbearable. He looked closely
at the people around him, yet no one looked
at him. Perhaps he wasn't there. But he was.

--Hayden Carruth, Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey: Poems 1991-1995, Copper Canyon Press, 1996, p. 88