Dedication 4 for Sid Grossman: Service

•

In a schoolroom in Guam a captain interviews you
for the officer training corps, his tiny green cap
sits like a kettle on his burning forehead.
He spits smoke into your chest, then
asks if you know many Jews back in Brooklyn.
Look, he says, we know what your background is.

At least this is what the file explains:
For the Conservation Corps you cut trails
north of Vendana Creek, on cliffs over
the breathless Pacific, you cleared red and gold
poison oak groves, blisters swelled and sweat
crested the broken cracks of skin.

After '41 you volunteered, ordinance battalion -
drove black-out trucks, loaded with a lathe and drill press -
made valves or crank shafts when tank drivers
used aviation fuel, or thought to grease the crank
with shoe polish or gun oil, Zeros

buzzing under cover of darkness, and in the morning,
sun through bullet holes. Or shells churning
up ground, the shocks running through
your bones as though you are made of flour and then

you collapse into sacks. Nominated for officer
training school after saving a battalion of Shermans—
you stopped a drunk colonel from using Japanese fuel
left over in abandoned tanks—it burns out American valves.

But this information is not relevant. You know
where you take your commission? Zukhov,
General of the Red Army. Now out of my face
Because when the company of black troops
came into Luzon, and needed a man
to run their logistics, the Lieutenant called on you.
Grossman will talk to those niggers, and when

you walked through the tropical darkness,
and onto the other side, and you spoke
with the ease and directness one grants to men,
it was obvious you had not learned this in the Army.