Poems April 1997

A truce

by John Clarke

As suddenly as such a war,
steam signals over our coffee cups—
set on white cloth in tremors of shade—
become propitious: sentries begin
to joke in my village, laugh in yours.
Ambassadors toss old writs to the wind.
Peasants bear laundry down to the river.
Trade routes reopen, crowded with wagons.

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