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The Web Poetry Corner - Frank Valentyn - A wounded Marine is evacuated from Seoul on 28 September 1950

A wounded Marine is evacuated from Seoul on 28 September 1950

by

Frank Valentyn

Nineteen visible here
one with hands in pockets, bareheaded, passive
right leg slightly bent forward at the knee, observing

One with sergeant's stripes
a somewhat commanding angle to upper torso
hands loosely at the sides but held some inches away
baggy creases in his left trouser leg, instructing

The only face turned in his direction
with boots in the act of turning
one foot pointing towards, the other away
from the implied position of the stretcher
in the overexposed whiteness of the grass

Seven around the parked jeep in the middle distance
one sitting on the rear bumper, hand on thigh
looking at the Wounded Marine, patiently unwounded

Three helmeted in the left foreground, relaxed
two of these looking away from the scene
one with pointing arm outstretched beyond the visible, aiming

Two look at the dust-cloud rolling in
bending and half-obscuring scraggy bushes
in the helicopter's flared approach
blades frozen in a static whirlwind
one blade scything in diffusely streaking grey

Four, in two groups of two, kneeling
hunched, feet sucked blackly into blending shadows
the closest one's shirt a white brilliant disappearance
attending, undistractable
and the stark relief of one end of a stretcher pole

Dust-washed barracks below flat receding hills
truck with a bent caging of superimposed crucifixes
damagingly alone, abandoned in the distance

One absent here, only present by implication
never arrived, already left, calmly indeterminate
the Wounded Marine

From a monochrome photograph of the same title

NEXT?
Why don't you look at We need another inquisition
by: James Bredin
from: Toronto, ON, CA

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