when I returned, things had changed  
while the wild white dogs still gnawed
at their prostrate prey, by the tracks we all cross,
they were larger, and raised their mongrel heads
only at the scent of me  
for I now could walk so I would not be seen  
or heard by their blue black tongues  
my children’s children were not there    
perhaps wandering in another's field
of dreams, with another’s eyes,
perchance another’s thumping heart  
all the homes were old, and smelled of the past, yet
the young ones inside were who I hoped they would be  
filled with the bright eyed promise of tomorrow  
though I tried to know them, they only smiled,  
spoke a language I could not understand,  
and left each morn without me, wandering
with the beggars and beasts, on trails I could not see  
the sun shone through every door  
sending shafts of light at my invisible feet  
without warming them or giving them
safe passage among the same old dogs
I longed to know, but who never saw me
again

my feet
are numb in my boots,
I have holes in my soles, the
brown water to my ankles
but it will not freeze  
filled with gun oil,
blood and drek

I am
not sure
when I slept last,
if I ever did  
the others are there,
their eyes closed  
some sleeping  
some trying to sleep  
some trying to awake,
though they will not  

we
have yet  
to throw their bodies
on the heap

all eyes
are closed in the trench
save mine, and the sergeant
who stands like a statue  
more still than the dead  
only his eyes move
back and forth  

when
I am not looking at the wire,
the rutted field, and the ridge
where the Germans also sleep,
breathing the same foul stench,
I close my eyes, though I do not sleep,
but think of home, of Irina
I see her eyes, not the sergeant’s
and wonder if they have been closed
like mama’s and papa’s
and those beside me

I ask
the sergeant if tomorrow will be
the white flag, when we and the Germans
can retrieve the dead, from the wires,
where they hang, starved naked apes…
and when the flares fire the night sky  
I see the reflection in their wide open eyes
like the glint of light on broken glass  

I cannot
close their eyes

all is still
except for the swimming rats
and the pyres that send curling smoke
into the gray sky--neither the rodents
nor the fires utter a sound  

the sun
is surely there, somewhere silently
making its arc in our pallid sky  
but the last time I saw it
was two mornings ago,
or three, or two

when it rose,
I felt it on my face  
through the caked mud,
and blood from Ivan,
who was shot through the neck
and fell on me, and I lay still
with him on top of me,
like a thick blanket
his warm life elixir
painting my helmet
and face red, him gasping softly,
though only a few seconds
until more rounds pocked his body,
a carcass by then,
but my salvation  

would I be
the sodden sack of flesh
that covers another?
would the one who hides
under me remember my name?
and recall that I was
his salvation,
though I only a breathless
monkey, with holes in my boots  
and a **** soiled uniform  

would he
walk bent over
with the blessed cane of age
and remember, all I had done
for him, by simply dying?