10. Threes

I WAS a boy when I heard three red words

a thousand Frenchmen died in the streets

for: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—I asked

why men die for words.

I was older; men with mustaches, sideburns,

lilacs, told me the high golden words are:

Mother, Home, and Heaven—other older men with

face decorations said: God, Duty, Immortality

—they sang these threes slow from deep lungs.

Years ticked off their say-so on the great clocks

of doom and damnation, soup and nuts: meteors flashed

their say-so: and out of great Russia came three

dusky syllables workmen took guns and went out to die

for: Bread, Peace, Land.

And I met a marine of the U.S.A., a leatherneck with a girl on his knee for a memory in ports circling the earth and he said: Tell me how to say three things and I always get by—gimme a plate of ham and eggs—how much?—and—do you love me, kid?

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