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Death in the Atlantic...A Poem
The Suicides of World War I Nurses Gladys Cromwell and Her Twin Sister Dorothea, 1885-1919, as if described by Gladys
"We can no longer bear the pain of pain, this world of pain in flesh and thought miswrought by god and man. 'The Saints of Chalons,' they called us, the men of Britain, France defiled by bomb and by artillery that churned the earth to meaninglessness, with body parts interred. Poison gas dissolved all lungs down-wind in low terrain, crater, hole and trench in which the mustard poured like mist cascading from a canyon edge. "We, too, were wounded to the death, not in flesh, but spirit and in mind. Imagine those who watch the basest acts of god and man, see too many unkind disembowelments. What then our view of life? How be the happy lady peeling okra for the kiddies, felicitous domesticity, when one has stared into corruption's blank and evil gaze, been engulfed, entombed like Jonah in the beast, the very depth of degradation gratis-strewn by god? "We are no longer what we were, innocents believing, disbelieving banal life from day to banal day, each selfish cell demanding its extension independent of any need or will within our brain or soul. Mindless life living self-indulgently; wasteful nature's god cares not how we live or die, but that life go on in utter wastefulness, empty, endless process; cruel continuance; art for art's sake; consumption most conspicuous. "My sister and I, the saints of Chalons, do not much feel like saints and angels; we are old at thirty-four, terribly old, ancient at thirty-four – ancient! -- millennia beyond chronology. We are weary – weary! -- broken by god and god's weary way of life and death on earth. Twins by birth, by service, sensitivity, we felt a call to aid our fellow man in direst need...and in the process fell headlong into the slime as far as one can ever fall, joined all the fallen angels, blackest demons horror-clad, fallen god and bankrupt, prostrate, savage man. "There is no depth of hell we've left behind unplumbed. Minds undone by proof that all is not the best for man in life on earth. The ghastly scream of outraged cells, pain beyond control of mind or will, the agony of young men ripped from limb to limb, atomized by Nobel's clever dream that later seeks to set its conscience right through legacy of empty dollars draining down the empty years. "This endless process, like the endlessness of space, endless, distant space beyond all zones and boundaries, made lonelier by a few deceptive stars, few thousand billion, trillion – what matter any figures – of indifferent stars, an eternity of empty light-years, empty space beyond the number-loving, numbing mind of man. All lies, fraud, unsubtle subterfuge; ant-idiot man believes himself a king... of kitchen slime, sardine cans with oily, curling lids; mere refuse, offal, rotting stench that clog the running sewers of the universe. "No longer well, devoured by abomination, we have thought and talked, illusion gone, long on this subject...needed no thought, no talk, not one single word, to understand, as twins, ultimate abomination. All our lives we've been as one. Pacing hand-in-hand the ocean liner's long and narrow deck, passing chatty couples glad to be alive, unmarred by savage war's caress, unkilled by influenza, laughing, laughing. Why cannot we laugh and carelessly stroll through life mindlessly as they? "At war's end, lost souls on rich ships return to America, land of...what?... banquets, dinners, crystal gleaming, china, table linens white, so white; white as the wistful soul of wistful, wondering, modern man. Where was this purity in the mud and blood, hopelessness of the endless, hopeless trench? Waiters, to and fro, bear aloft champagne, the finest wines on silver salvers served, goose and rabbit, sole and lamb well-done, rare beneath their domes of steel (how like the helmet filled with skull and oozing brain, machine-gun sieved that drains its bloody juice away... broken brain a jus! Bon appetite). "We, on impulse, hand in hand, as if twin minds with an ultimate plan, screamed and leaped head-long into the frozen deep. We clambered, threw ourselves beyond the rail, beyond the reach of man, into the freezing waters of the grasping sea that was the U-boats hunting ground, sanctuary. We threw ourselves into eternity, the endless sea, were tossed through dismal time and space like the sad and lonely human race by thoughtless, ever-loving god. "It is not your business to ask or know our last thoughts (why should we disturb your peace of mind? What do you care of us, safe – you think -- in your destiny? This was our private -- it was all humanity's! -- agony)... as we floundered in huge seas, drifting, drifting, small bits of cosmic dirt astern the fleeing ship, fleeing for its sanity, its own sustaining delusion of stability, flotsam-jetsam sanctuary in the land of the free, universe of high cosmic flim and flam. "We held hands – if you must know – when we leaped into a sea – Dorothea! Dorothea! -- rougher than Courbet, more frigid than Conrad ever knew. Did we try to swim, say good-bye, hold our breath, speak to god, of god; gasp a prayer...to what? Was there deity somewhere with gushing eye and heaving breast powerless to intervene in the failure of its own creation? Did we, in final human ambiguity (god grant us this indignity) regret a major mistake, long for the warmth of dry state-room safety, safely taken from this filthy, searing, salty sea? "Vain, oh vainly wish we had not flung our shocked and shuddering flesh and soul into such desperate circumstance, every single cell combating every other -- like a trampling crowd at a soccer match -- shrieking for continuity of mindless life, their own mindless life, seeking to thwart the purposeful madness that sent us plunging madly over rail into the racking sea? Or, did we simply slide into the deep, abide, in grateful gratefulness, join plankton and the whales, without regret of any kind, in fervid thanks our consciousness was finally at an end? Oh, Dorothea!"
Copyright by Don Gray
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