used to burn the Jews.“The Vow” is a disturbing poem that relates the narrative of a father’s conversation with his recently miscarried child (Hecht, Vol. 19 207). The image of the bloody, formless child speaks to the father, and the child’s comments establish the irony that shows the “narrative of atrocity:” “Mourn rather for all/Who breathlessly issue from the bone gates,/The gates of horn,/For truly it is best of all the fates/Not to be born” (Hecht, “The Vow” 726). The child presents the view that never living is the best fate which depicts Hecht’s view that “pain and grief mix so homogeneously with the stuff of existence that we may assume their omnipresence” (Hecht, Vol 13. 269). Finally, “Christmas is Coming” is a poem reflective of Hecht’s time spent in the Army during World War II. Hecht develops irony in this piece by alluding to the old Christmas carol that states “Christmas is coming. The goose is getting fat./Please put a penny in the Old Man’s hat” (Brown 118). Hecht in his poem uses brutal imagery to convey the harsh situation that existed for the soldiers at the Battle of the Bulge: Must find out thistles to remember pain.Keep to the frozen ground or else be killed.Yet crawling one encounters in the darkThe frosty carcasses of birds, their feet And wings all glazed. And still we crawl to learn Where pain was lost, how to recover pain.Reach for the brambles, crawl to them and reach,Clutching for thorns, search carefully to feelThe point of thorns, life’s crown, the Old Man’s hat. (Brown 118-119)The irony is that frozen, malnourished birds surround the soldier narrating the poem (Brown 118). Futher irony exists in the description of the soldier seeking out the pain of the thorns. The pain which most soldiers try to avoid, ironically, is here the only thing that reminds the soldier he is al...
