Military Review

     Picked squadrons of the swiftest jets
     Streak over every quarter hour;
     Trim choristers in epaulets
     Sing paeans to resistless power.

     The missle-laden flatbeds pass
     In low-gear promenade before
     Reviewing stands of aging brass
     With medals from a finished war.

     The foreign dignitaries see
     New armored cars and slate-gray bombs,
     While ranks of clockwork infantry
     Perform the manual of arms.

     The Chairman of the JCS
     Stands ramrod-rigid at the side
     Of congressmen in formal dress
     Who orate on how heroes died

     And how, when prompted by command,
     The armies of the Lord of Hosts
     Shall scour air and sea and land
     To turn our foemen into ghosts.

     The bunting, banners, and the flags
     Hang motionless, becalmed, at ease,
     Like sails reduced to tattered rags
     Untouched by any vagrant breeze,

     And shades, who once held spears and shields,
     Recall, remember, contemplate
     The peopling of their barren fields—
     The place, the weapon, and the date.

Joseph S. Salemi teaches in the Department of Classical Languages at Hunter College, CUNY.  He has published several books of poetry, and is a regular contributor to the website The Society of Classical Poets.

Founded in 1957 by the great Russell Kirk, Modern Age is the forum for stimulating debate and discussion of the most important ideas of concern to conservatives of all stripes. It plays a vital role in these contentious, confusing times by applying timeless principles to the specific conditions and crises of our age—to what Kirk, in the inaugural issue, called “the great moral and social and political and economic and literary questions of the hour.”