I
Happy are men who yet before they are killed
Can let their veins run cold.
Whom no compassion fleers
Or makes their feet
Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
The front line withers.
But they are troops who fade, not flowers,
For poets' tearful fooling:
Men, gaps for filling:
Losses, who might have fought
Longer; but no one bothers.


                                   II
And some cease feeling
Even themselves or for themselves.
Dullness best solves
The tease and doubt of shelling,
And Chance's strange arithmetic
Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.
They keep no check on armies' decimation.


                                   III
Happy are these who lose imagination:
They have enough to carry with ammunition.
Their spirit drags no pack.
Their old wounds, save with cold, can not more ache.
Having seen all things red,
Their eyes are rid
Of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever.
And terror's first constriction over,
Their hearts remain small-drawn.
Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle
Now long since ironed,
Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned.


                                   IV
Happy the soldier home, with not a notion
How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,
And many sighs are drained.
Happy the lad whose mind was never trained:
His days are worth forgetting more than not.
He sings along the march
Which we march taciturn, because of dusk,
The long, forlorn, relentless trend
From larger day to huger night.


                                   V
We wise, who with a thought besmirch
Blood over all our soul,
How should we see our task
But through his blunt and lashless eyes?
Alive, he is not vital overmuch;
Dying, not mortal overmuch;
Nor sad, nor proud,
Nor curious at all.
He cannot tell
Old men's placidity from his.


                                   VI
But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,
That they should be as stones.
Wretched are they, and mean
With paucity that never was simplicity.
By choice they made themselves immune
To pity and whatever mourns in man
Before the last sea and the hapless stars;
Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;
Whatever shares
The eternal reciprocity of tears

to the moon  i went skimming all the
puddles piling!on the trunks o
f
          the
floral ocean bending passionately waxy
devotions     to      a        silken     sphere
dazzling pearl  sharp littles

        O, how cleanly stubborn the ridge concussed
              velvety brushes salt the earth iridescent,
dreamy sky cream pillow the brows of all the upturned
       lashless lids craving your milk blood

                                 silver                it                    like                   a:

            







                            s                                  
                          i
                                 n;

Burning crown of golden glory, crusade
Cascade down my corpse like water, toppling
Wobbling pillar legs, eroding away

Cliché shoulder chips. Scorch scarf this thin skin
Therein a conversion of faith. Baptized
Eyes, lashless from rapid oxidation,

Imagination draught, greyscale landscapes,
Escape the reaction zone, relapse in
Collapsed dead space. Swallow the prophet whole.

Cajole the gut advice, heed it to heart.
Hot bleached skin, remnant of fever, frail ash
Dashed in the heavy summer breeze, tumble

Crumble under fingers, over myself.
Sulfur-lined lips ignite epiphanies,
Key-locked doors welded shut now ashy piles.

Smile of a statue spilt on veneer
Near the window. Husked corpse of cheap incense,
Scents of lavender, meekly melt away.

Ashtray of a grave, taste the bitter burn
Return again to bury my mortal.
Laurel on the pyre, you sing the hymn,

Swim within thin chapters of a dead flame,
Claim the blame of scorch scars and disappear.
Hear the fire eat. Smell its heat. Consume

Perfume of a personal breed, discard
Charred temple walls. This body, like incense,
Thence an ashen husk, molder from my touch.