A Short History of Wavell

One blind eye watered for years
By useless atoms. In there. Blind
As a karstic candle. Blind, flamed-over
Cave. He lives in India. Ever since he got kicked
Out of the woman in Colchester. He bravely
Led men to their chert and mud. Chert trapped
In their dead shirts. He assembled rifles in the Transvaal
And ordered bullet-wound reports on the seventeenth
Century casualty figures. Bribed bat-eaters. Wavell, little
Known smuggler of Paleolithic art. Of marble and salt-art.
He ordered counteroffensives against cryptofacist futurist pilots
And denounced with vigor any talk of retrograde maneuvers.
He ordered Balbo back from the dead. And you know what. The ashes
Flowered out of flak. Like antiques. Like coins stamped
With the algebra of gold and crooked noses. Like the broken clothes
Of hermits. He lost wars in the desert. He did. His eye never got in the way.
He works hard now, after all that tank chess, to start a cold fight. He works hard
To reconcile the Brahman with the snub-nose, the prophet with the tusk.












Andrew Wollard is "currently completing my M.F.A. at the University of Alabama. I have a previous publication in the Berkeley Poetry Review ( Fall 2001 ). I live in Tuscaloosa now and enjoy pilfering history books for juicy tidbits."






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