By the bonfire in the winter night
warming hands, a shadow

Dying muffled in the mist,
What about
my languid soul?

A hundred shadows echoing
in the wind beating in the wood:

How long this slaughter?
How long this pallid war
that nobody wants to end?

Hit, skirmish, dew-blood,
death and night,
and the stench at dawn.
How long?

Are you done smouldering,
firebrand? That from the ash
must rise a conflagration,

raining a harvest of ghosts
on this highway to hell.