The Old Liberators by Robert Hedin : American Life in Poetry

The Poetry Foundation

Library of Congress

University of Nebraska
at Lincoln

American Life in Poetry: Column 185

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

When I was a boy, there were still a few veterans of the Spanish American War, and more of The Great War, or World War I, and now all those have died and those who served in World War II are passing from us, too. Robert Hedin, a Minnesota poet, has written a fine poem about these people.

The Old Liberators

Of all the people in the mornings at the mall,

it’s the old liberators I like best,

those veterans of the Bulge, Anzio, or Monte Cassino

I see lost in Automotive or back in Home Repair,

bored among the paints and power tools.

Or the really old ones, the ones who are going fast,

who keep dozing off in the little orchards

of shade under the distant skylights.

All around, from one bright rack to another,

their wives stride big as generals,

their handbags bulging like ripe fruit.

They are almost all gone now,

and with them they are taking the flak

and fire storms, the names of the old bombing runs.

Each day a little more of their memory goes out,

darkens the way a house darkens,

its rooms quietly filling with evening,

until nothing but the wind lifts the lace curtains,

the wind bearing through the empty rooms

the rich far off scent of gardens

where just now, this morning,

light is falling on the wild philodendrons.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 1999 by Robert Hedin. Reprinted from “The Old Liberators: New and Selected Poems and Translations,” Holy Cow! Press, 1999, by permission of the Robert Hedin. Introduction copyright © 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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