A Bunch of Poems from "The Serpent's Teeth" by Daniel Keene

I really liked the poetry in this play. I think I am writing this more for me, rather than anyone else. :-)

These are all lines from grieving characters.

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(Sam)
My brother is swallowed in his death
His baffled cry still echoing
Footprints still hardening in his blood
The days at least are merciful
I lose what's already lost
But at night, the darkness blazes
with the music of his voice;
Our games have never ended
The rubber ball we bounced
Pounds inside my chest
Our game of hide and seek
Ends only when I wake
Still searching for his hiding place."

(Catherine)
"They'll carve his name in stone,
Why not here in my breast?
Why not here in the palm of my hand?
I'll wear his absence on my face,
why not his name?
There is a flame that burns
for dead soldiers;
What feeds the flame of remembrance?
The living are the fuel that memory burns.
We burn more slowly than the dead.
Our crematoria are the beds we sleep in,
the streets we walk,
the rooms where we wait
for the son who is not returning.
We leave a trail of ashes
That are slowly scattered by the wind."

(Helen)
We lived in our own country
And knew each other's seasons
His body was naked as air,
His hands a harbour and a sea.
Our bed was a wild garden
Where my eyes were mirrored in his.
We drank from each other's bodies
and slept in each other's silence.
How should I remember him?
Who should I tell that I loved him?

(Tom)
What's left of my son?
What's in that box, draped in a flag?
Have they managed to stitch anything together?
Does it even resemble a body?
Does it matter?
I remember holding his hand
That was in another life
But it was my life
My son in my arms is something I've felt
My son's voice is something I've heard
I've seen his shoulders broaden
His voice darken with manhood
I don't want to see my son again.
I want him in my arms,
dead or living,
the bright grave joy of his youth,
his going away and his coming home again
I want my son.

(Robert)
I hear the voice of son calling
He looks homewards to me
where I burn
in the suspended nightmare of his loss,
not yet able to scream, nor weep, nor curse.
My son calls me
and I answer him.
Come home to me now
Bring your lost life
to grief's foundry.
We'll forge a meaning from it;
the hammer of my tears
on the anvil of your blood.
It is in the labour that matters,
the shaping out of emptiness
the necessary presence of your death.

(Catherine)
Now we will learn our grief, waiting
for those not coming home
to come home nonetheless.
We'll make new lives
and learn to live with emptiness.