poetry

[Barrett]

The following is from an aviation poetry site.
http://www.coastcomp.com/av/fltline2/avpoem.htm

The War in the Air

by Howard Nemerov

For a saving grace, we didn't see our dead, Who rarely bothered coming home to die
But simply stayed away out there
In the clean war, the war in the air.

Seldom the ghosts came back bearing their tales Of hitting the earth,
the incompressible sea, But stayed up there in the relative wind,
Shades fading in the mind,

Who had no graves but only epitaphs
Where never so many spoke for never so few: _Per ardua_, said the partisans of Mars,
_Per aspera_, to the stars.

That was the good war, the war we won
As if there were no death, for goodness' sake,
With the help of the losers we left out there
In the air, in the empty air.