In my youth in the Polish People’s Republic, the 1st of September was the start of the school year, but also the anniversary of Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939. From my parents I knew that the 17th was the date of the invasion from the east, when the Soviet Red Army joined hands with German troops of National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP, or Nazi) to destroy Poland. Meanwhile, the whole month continued commemorations of the Warsaw Uprising (1 August – 2 October 1944), when 18 thousand youth fought against overwhelming forces of Wehrmacht, SS, Police, Waffen SS, & RONA that murdered about 200,000 civilians in two months. On my walk to school every day I saw three cement crosses: “this place is sanctified by the blood of (15, or 23, or 56) Poles murdered by Germans on (5 or 6) of August, 1944.” The end of October brought everyone to cemeteries and monuments, with candles and wreaths, to remember all the dead, especially soldiers and war victims (Zaduszki).
Emigrating to the U.S. meant learning an entirely new calendar of national sorrows; there were fewer than in Poland, perhaps because of the national focus on success, not martyrdom, perhaps because the U.S. avoids remembering the dead (Halloween!!!) and teaching the tragic war history in the media. Here, I kept reading about the Pearl Harbor attack of 7 December 1941 and deaths of thousands of American soldiers, remembered along with the victims of the Hiroshima atomic bomb atrocity of 6 August 1945 and the atomic annihilation of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. But not much more. Things changed on 11 September 2001 when nearly three thousand people were murdered, and the endless War on Terror began.
On 10 September 2025, a martyr of free speech was assassinated in front of his wife, young daughter, thousands of students, and bystanders. Charlie Kirk (1993-2025) was viciously shot in a political assassination, that continued an infamous American “tradition.” Let’s recall the assassinations of Presidents Abraham Lincoln (1865), James A. Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901), and John F. Kennedy (1963). If we add to this list the presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy (1968) and the civil right leader Martin Luther King (1968), the image of a deadly political culture is bleak. I’m particularly sensitive to this issue, since my parents were shot by robbers in their summer house in the Polish village on 3 April 2000. This was a robbery, not an assassination, my parents were victims, not martyrs. But I’m “allergic” to anyone claiming that anyone, anywhere, has any “right” to express their opinion by committing murder. That’s the playbook of Nazis and Communists. So, let’s read Walt Whitman, again, shall we?
One of California Quarterly Editors, Konrad Tademar Wilk, has a custom of commemorating recent passings of important individuals or anniversaries of significant events with sonnets. His sonnet for Charlie Kirk is here. This poem, in a traditional form, points to the “Socratic” dialogue as a civilized way of dealing with discord. Who knows about Socrates and Plato these days? Maybe, we left the roots of our civilization too far behind in the quest for multi-cultural modernity?
Maybe it is time to look back, and enjoy the skill of a wordsmith, found in Catharine Savage Brosman’s poems? She graciously allowed us to reprint her verse posted by the Poetry Foundation and the Academy of American Poets, as an introduction to her creative universe.
The theme of seeking after violence is continuing in verse by two other poets. Serendipitously, John Accurso of the Sierra Nevada, submitted two brief poems for consideration, with visions of peace without violence. "Honoring the fallen" is a theme of two brief contributions by our book review editor, Michael Escoubas.
A life ended, yet the words remain. Our poetry also goes on. Ars Longa, Vita Brevis.
~ Maja Trochimczyk, CSPS President
WALT WHITMAN’S ELEGY FOR THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Since a political association ended the life of a young civil rights leader, Christian apologist and conservative activist, Charlie Kirk (1993 – d. 10 Sept. 2025), it is time to re-read a literary classic, a long poem by Walt Whitman (1819–1892), written to honour the memory of President Abraham Lincoln. Even without the name
of the President it is an elegy for President Lincoln, born in 1809, first elected on 4 March 1861, re-elected in March 1865, and assassinated on 14 April 1865. The poem was written during the period of national mourning in the summer of 1865.
WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOORYARD BLOOM’D
1
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.
2
O powerful western fallen star!
O shades of night—O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappear’d—O the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.
3
In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard,
With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.
4
In the swamp in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
Solitary the thrush,
The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song.
Song of the bleeding throat,
Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,
If thou wast not granted to sing thou would’st surely die.)
5
Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep’d from the ground, spotting the gray debris,
Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endless grass,
Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen,
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
Night and day journeys a coffin.
6
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,
With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in black,
With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil’d women standing,
With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,
With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads,
With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn,
With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d around the coffin,
The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs—where amid these you journey,
With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang,
Here, coffin that slowly passes,
I give you my sprig of lilac.
7
(Nor for you, for one alone,
Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring,
For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song /
for you O sane and sacred death.
All over bouquets of roses,
O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies,
But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes,
With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
For you and the coffins all of you O death.)
8
O western orb sailing the heaven,
Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk’d,
As I walk’d in silence the transparent shadowy night,
As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after night,
As you droop’d from the sky low down as if to my side, (while the other stars all look’d on,)
As we wander’d together the solemn night, (for something I know not what kept me from sleep,)
As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full you were of woe,
As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent night,
As I watch’d where you pass’d and was lost in the netherward black of the night,
As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you sad orb,
Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.
9
Sing on there in the swamp,
O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call,
I hear, I come presently, I understand you,
But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain’d me,
The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.
10
O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?
Sea-winds blown from east and west,
Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till there on the prairies meeting,
These and with these and the breath of my chant,
I’ll perfume the grave of him I love.
11
O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?
And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
To adorn the burial-house of him I love?
Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,
With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright,
With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun, burning, expanding the air,
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the trees prolific,
In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a wind-dapple here and there,
With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and shadows,
And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys,
And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen homeward returning.
12
Lo, body and soul—this land,
My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships,
The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light, Ohio’s shores and flashing Missouri,
And ever the far-spreading prairies cover’d with grass and corn.
Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,
The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,
The gentle soft-born measureless light,
The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill’d noon,
The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,
Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.
13
Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird,
Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes,
Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.
Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song,
Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
O liquid and free and tender!
O wild and loose to my soul—O wondrous singer!
You only I hear—yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart,)
Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me.
14
Now while I sat in the day and look’d forth,
In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and the farmers preparing their crops,
In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests,
In the heavenly aerial beauty, (after the perturb’d winds and the storms,)
Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and women,
The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sail’d,
And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor,
And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages,
And the streets how their throbbings throbb’d, and the cities pent—lo, then and there,
Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,
Appear’d the cloud, appear’d the long black trail,
And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.
Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me,
And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,
And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions,
I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not,
Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness,
To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.
And the singer so shy to the rest receiv’d me,
The gray-brown bird I know receiv’d us comrades three,
And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love.
From deep secluded recesses,
From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still,
Came the carol of the bird.
And the charm of the carol rapt me,
As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night,
And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.
Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later delicate death.
Prais’d be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
And for love, sweet love—but praise! praise! praise!
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.
Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
Approach strong deliveress,
When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead,
Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death.
From me to thee glad serenades,
Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee,
And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting,
And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
The night in silence under many a star,
The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,
And the soul turning to thee O vast and well-veil’d death,
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,
Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields /
and the prairies wide,
Over the dense-pack’d cities all and the teeming wharves/
and ways,
I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death.
15
To the tally of my soul,
Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,
With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night.
Loud in the pines and cedars dim,
Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume,
And I with my comrades there in the night.
While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,
As to long panoramas of visions.
And I saw askant the armies,
I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,
Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc’d with missiles I saw them,
And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,
And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, (and all in silence,)
And the staffs all splinter’d and broken.
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
But I saw they were not as was thought,
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not,
The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d,
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d,
And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.
16
Passing the visions, passing the night,
Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades’ hands,
Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul,
Victorious song, death’s outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,
As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night,
Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy,
Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,
As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,
Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.
I cease from my song for thee,
From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee,
O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.
Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,
The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,
And the tallying chant, the echo arous’d in my soul,
With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe,
With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands—and this for his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.
~ Walt Whitman (1819-1892, written in 1865)
Among the Sierra Nevada by Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), oil on canvas, 1868. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Helen Huntington Hull, granddaughter of William Brown Dinsmore, who acquired the painting in 1873 for "The Locusts," the family estate in Dutchess County, New York. Donated in 1917.
THOSE WHO LACK WORDS RESORT TO BULLETS…
Odeum Libertatis Dicendi (Hatred of the Freedom of Speech)
The term martyr derives from the Greek word for witness. In Roman Catholic Doctrine, a murder committed on a Christian in Odeum Fidei (Hatred of the Faith) bestows upon the murdered an automatic recognition of martyrdom.
I can feel the breeze of directed fate, it stings
My cheeks are burning, my heart is racing, I sit
A supernatural presence of mind, held me
To pull over my car to the side of the road
Words… is what these are, speech captured by ink, paper
But in my hands, there is blood and muscles, sinews
I write because my heart is beating, my brain lives
A whole universe is within my thoughts, alive
I turn off the radio, I can listen no more
“When does the soul obtain truth?” is it at death’s door?
Socrates speaks no more… I read him blind, I ache
The cross tastes of steel, salt, vinegar stain my lips
I open the windows, breathe out his name: Charlie…
…think… what does his last name mean? Oh yes, it means church.
September 15, 2025 – On the assassination of Charlie Kirk, born October 14, 1993 in Arlington Heights, Illinois, murdered on the eve of the 24th anniversary of 9/11/01 – on September 10, 2025 in Orem, Utah at the age of 31 years, 10 months and 27 days, while holding a microphone and engaging in a public debate with Utah Valley University students, in front of an audience of 3000 people, 20 minutes into his event, at 12:23 pm.
“Up until his dying moment, Charlie was engaging in a practice that goes back to Socrates and that informs the West at its best.” Bishop Robert Barron, September 15, 2025
~ Konrad Tademar
FEATURED POET – CATHARINE SAVAGE BROSMAN
The majority of poets featured in our Poetry Letters write free verse, perhaps with an exception of haiku poets like Deborah P Kolodji or Naia, or a sonnet-poet, Konrad Tademar Wilk. It seems to me, an ESL poet, that writing poetry with rhymes and meter, with rhythm and order, is much harder than free verse.
In this issue of the Poetry Letter we feature a sample of verse by Catharine Savage Brosman (born 1934) who mastered this art. She is a scholar of French literature and a Professor Emerita at Tulane University. Born in Denver, Colorado, raised in Alpine, Texas, she graduated from Rice university with M.A. in French, followed by Ph.D. in French also from Rice. She taught at Tulane University since 1968, as full professor from 1972-1997. She published many books of poems and essays on French literature in the U.S., U.K., and France.
Her volumes of poetry include: Aerosols and Other Poems (2023); Arm in Arm: Poems (2022); Clara's Bees: Poems (2021); Chained Tree, Chained Owls (2020), A Memory of Manaus: Poems (2017); On the Old Plaza (2014); On the North Slope (2012); Under the Pergola (2011); Breakwater (2009); Range of Light (2007); The Muscled Truce (2003); Places in Mind (2000); Passages (2006); Journeying from Canyon de Chelly (1990); and Watering (1972). The poems cited here were previously published or reprinted by the Poetry Foundation. Academy of American Poets, and Academic Questions, the journal of National Association of Scholars.
CATTLE FORDING TARRYALL CREEK
With measured pace, they move in single file,
dark hides, white faces, plodding through low grass,
then walk into the water, cattle-style,
indifferent to the matter where they pass.
The stream is high, the current swift—good rain,
late snow-melt, cold. Immerging to the flank,
the beasts proceed, a queue, a bovine chain,
impassive, stepping to the farther bank—
continuing their march, as if by word,
down valley to fresh pasture. The elect,
and stragglers, join, and recompose the herd,
both multiple and single, to perfect
impressions of an animated scene,
the creek’s meanders, milling cows, and sun.
Well cooled, the cattle graze knee-deep in green.
We leave them to their feed, this painting done.
~ Catharine Savage Brosman
Poem copyright ©2014 by Catharine Savage Brosman, reprinted by permission of Catharine Savage Brosman.
FOR A CHAMPION
I don’t reply to insults often—not my style,
a waste of time. Besides, I was not reared
for such contentious intercourse. But while
I shall be reticent, a friend has cleared
my name—three missiles, launched in my defense!
King Arthur, were he here, with mighty sword,
would not be needed; courtesy, good sense,
poetic wit suffice. The fellow’s gored.
He called my formal poems “precious,” “prissy,”
ignoring women’s nature, taste, and tone,
and treated me as just a worthless missy.
Had I been vulgar, “woke,” I might have shone.
He thought it must have had to do with race
and bigotry. Tory prejudice, my alibi.
He’s quite mistaken; that is not the case,
except in his strabismic, crooked eye.
as evidence of hopeless obsolescence.
I’ve read his stuff. Banal. To his confusion,
he’ll see it all dissolve into putrescence.
So thank you, Sir, for taking up my cause,
my colors, Nature’s hues, which he disdains.
Your mighty pen will surely get applause;
he’ll get poetic justice for his pains.
~ Catharine Savage Brosman
Published in Academic Questions, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring 2021). Reprinted by permission of Catharine Savage Brosman.
HONOR FLIGHT* – A REFLECTION ON PATRIOTISM
BY MICHAEL ESCOUBAS
A simple thank you seems inadequate, but thank you is all I have . . . that and many tears. I will always remember the Honor Flight arranged and administrated by my wife, Trudy. Our eldest son Travis came home to serve as my Guardian, ensuring that my only job that day was to enjoy visiting the memorials commemorating America’s hard-won freedoms.
My heart is full of gratitude to scores of friends who wrote gracious letters and notes received at mail call on the flight home—so many that they bulged the cloth container nearly to the breaking point. As if that were not enough, many of you were in the throng assembled at Springfield Capitol Airport to welcome all the veterans home. WOW! I was disoriented and completely at a loss. It was late at night; you could have been in bed or enjoying your favorite show . . . but you gave yourselves to others. Thank you, thank you.
Visiting the Vietnam Memorial was a highlight. The “Wall” is sculpted into the earth creating an atmosphere of reality that war happens in the crucible of life. There are 58,000 names; I wanted to find one name. “Tommy” and I were both apprentices at Pantagraph Printing in 1965. He joined the Army; I joined the Navy. Tommy was killed by a sniper on the last day of his deployment. Travis helped me find his name. I lingered for a moment, touched my friend, my memory of him now etched in granite. The Honor Flight was consummated in real time.
A wise man has said, “God’s blessings are new every morning.” This came true for me on August 22, 2023.
~ Michael Escoubas
*Honor Flights are conducted by non-profit organizations dedicated to bringing as many United States military veterans as possible to see the memorials in Washington, D.C. Veterans visit up to ten memorials in one day. Honor Flights are at no cost to the veterans. The initial Honor Flight occurred in May 2005.
Previously published in the November issue of Limited Magazine, Bloomington, IL, 2023.
VETERAN’S DAY AT OLYMPIA WEST, 2019
There’s nothing like the power
of a thing said straight.
As when the grade school student body
stood and cheered for us when we
filed in for the school assembly.
And the patriotic songs sung
by youth choirs, their sweet notes
lingering like scents of roses in spring air.
And the honor bestowed on the flag
and the nation and her freedom
heritage and the high price paid.
And the tears that flowed
from the notes the kids wrote:
Hello, I am in 4th grade and I
want to thank all of you for sacerficing
your life for us. all summer I pray
at the mamorells. dont let anyone
tell you that you are nothing
because you are everything,
you are gods angils.
How precious these tears
that flow and flow and flow.
