A Mad Fight Song for William S. Carpenter, 1966

By James Wright 1927–1980 James Wright

Varus, varus, gib mir meine Legionen wieder

Quick on my feet in those Novembers of my loneliness,

I tossed a short pass,

Almost the instant I got the ball, right over the head

Of Barrel Terry before he knocked me cold.

When I woke, I found myself crying out

Latin conjugations, and the new snow falling

At the edge of a green field.

Lemoyne Crone had caught the pass, while I lay

Unconscious and raging

Alone with the fire ghost of Catullus, the contemptuous graces tossing

Garlands and hendecasyllabics over the head

Of Cornelius Nepos the mastodon,

The huge volume.

At the edges of Southeast Asia this afternoon

The quarterbacks and the lines are beginning to fall,

A spring snow,

And terrified young men

Quick on their feet

Lob one another’s skulls across

Wings of strange birds that are burning

Themselves alive.

NOTES: (Note: Carpenter, a West Pointer, called for his own troops to be napalmed rather than have them surrender. General Westmoreland called him “hero” and made him his aide, and President Johnson awarded him a Silver Star for courage.)

James Wright, “A Mad Fight Song for William S. Carpenter, 1966” from Above the River: The Complete Poems and Selected Prose. Copyright © 1990 by James Wright. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

Source: Above the River: The Complete Poems and Selected Prose (1990)

Biography

James Wright was frequently referred to as one of America's finest contemporary poets. He was admired by critics and fellow poets alike for his willingness and ability to experiment with language and style, as well as for his thematic concerns. In the Minnesota Review, Peter A. Stitt wrote that Wright's work both represents and parallels the development of the best modern American poets: "Reading the Collected Poems of James . . .

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