Fighting is moaning and pulling
swords from the corpses, wet
sandals, red feet washed
in blood, and that it takes hours

to clean the square and the palace
at night and still
be chased out of the city

Fighting is turning odds
not giving up, but coming up
with a ruse, a wooden horse
a Münchhausen or tunnel

entering the closed city
of the king with hundreds
through the shaft to the water castle

Fighting is attacking again
and again, shouting, hewing
and clawing as lions
over growing mountains

of the dead, because it is near
even though we withdraw
it is near as long as we live