Casualty My father arrived safely home From the carnage of Korea, Surviving the frigid fox-holes, Lunar shadows like bayonets, An acetylene ice of starlight, Where any silhouette was lethal, A luminous bleed on the snow-drift, A stark landscape mortar-pocked, Screaming tsunamis of infantry In shock-waves across the Yalu. It was the dark nicotine stain Along his gaunt trigger-finger, Like an ironic campaign tattoo, That finally ushered in death, Years on in the marl of History, Killed by the fume that warmed him, Like cruel shrapnel in his breath, In an under-belly of the world, A deadly sub-Arctic of politics, In…