Brian Turner is a soldier-poet who served for seven years in the U.S. Army. His book, Here, Bullet, reflects his war-time experiences in graceful and unflinching poetry. Turner tells Steve Inskeep about the military tradition in his family and why he joined the Army when he was almost 30. He reads selected poems from his collection and reflects on what inspired them. One poem, Eulogy, was written to memorialize a soldier in his platoon who took his own life. Full interview.
…
Eulogy
It happens on a
Monday,
at 11:20
A.M.,
as tower guards eat
sandwiches
and seagulls drift by
on the Tigris River.
Prisoners tilt their
heads to the west
though burlap sacks
and duct tape blind
them.
The sound
reverberates down
concertina coils
the way piano wire
thrums when given
slack.
And it happens like
this, on a blue day of
sun,
when Private Miller
pulls the trigger
to take brass and fire
into his mouth:
the sound lifts the
birds up off the water,
a mongoose pauses
under the orange
trees,
and nothing can stop
it now, no matter
what
blur of motion
surrounds him, no
matter what voices
crackle over the radio
in static confusion,
because if only for
this moment the
earth is stilled,
and Private Miller has
found what low hush
there is
down in the
eucalyptus shade,
there by the river.
PFC B. Miller
(1980-March 22, 2004)