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The coat without a seam, and other poems cover

The coat without a seam, and other poems

Chapter 14: WAR-SACRIFICE
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About This Book

This collection of lyric and narrative poems moves between wartime urgency and reflective peace, offering sonnets, elegies, and short lyrics that interrogate sacrifice, patriotism, and the yearning for reconciliation. Voices range from public banners and martial images to intimate meditations on grief, domestic memory, and nature. Frequent religious and moral imagery frames contemplations of duty, loss, and the possibility of a unified humanity. Formal variety includes sonnet sequences and freer lyrics, often balancing didactic rhetoric with tender observation to consider how communities and individuals reckon with conflict, remembrance, and the promise of healing.

WAR-SACRIFICE

On a rock-altar stern
In sacrificial fires,
A man goes up to burn
His memories and desires.
Sweet savors of the earth,
All innocence and ease,
All pleasantness and mirth,
He offers on his knees.
His trembling, star-white dreams;
His body’s secret fear;
His life—how dear it seems,
How knit with lives more dear!
Last offering, and most dread—
With blind arms thrust above
His bowed and suffering head,
He burns his brother-love:
Yet from that altar springs,
Magnificently bright,
A Love with fiery wings
To fill the world with light.