Once More For War Poem by Robert Rorabeck

When the children finally go to sleep underneath the
Architectures of their shelter,
Aren’t they just like balsam wood in prayer:
Aren’t they the sweetest sort of things, like all of my mother
Is young and apple round on her wedding:
Eyes like two candles looking up at him, the father to
Be of her children-
And the roof always has an apex, leading up that the rains
Run down;
And in the carport of my childhood the car is blue with electronic
Windows:
My mother almost drowns in a canal pregnant with my sister,
And I don’t even know:
I go to school to get caught: I dream of beautiful girls,
I dream of my mother in a grotto filigreed with
Tadpoles and pearls,
And she is there now sleeping in the darkness.
The washing machine is quiet, the sills on the windows need mending;
And she has a dream, my mother,
Like a Virgin in the darkness of the aloe where she is sleeping.
She comes out at night and prays beneath the synagogue
Of the trailer from Michigan,
Casting her in its blue flags across the street from the Australian Pines
That whisper luridly of the other girls wavering in amidst
Their shallow pornographies,
And the conquistadors march on the footpaths of plastic sailors
And the men who have dreams of her
As they leave once more for war.