If, in an odd angle of the hutment, A puppy laps the water from a can Of flowers, and the drunk sergeant shaving Whistles O Paradiso!--shall I say that man Is not as men have said: a wolf to man? The other murderers troop in yawning; Three of them play Pitch, one sleeps, and one Lies counting missions, lies there sweating Till even his heart beats: One; One; One. O murderers! . . . Still, this is how it's done: This is a war . . . But since these play, before they die, Like puppies with their puppy; since, a man, I did as these have done, but did not die-- I will content the people as I can And give up these to them: Behold the man! I have suffered, in a dream, because of him, Many things; for this last saviour, man, I have lied as I lie now. But what is lying? Men wash their hands, in blood, as best they can: I find no fault in this just man. It was not dying: everybody died. It was not dying: we had died before In the routine crashes-- and our fields Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks, And the rates rose, all because of us. We died on the wrong page of the almanac, Scattered on mountains fifty miles away; Diving on haystacks, fighting with a friend, We blazed up on the lines we never saw. We died like aunts or pets or foreigners. (When we left high school nothing else had died For us to figure we had died like.) | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HOMAGE TO SEXTUS PROPERTIUS: 2 by EZRA POUND MY YOUTH by WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES COUNT THAT DAY LOST by MARY ANN EVANS AT THE SHRINE by RICHARD KENDALL MUNKITTRICK TO A BLOCKHEAD by ALEXANDER POPE A DUTCH PROVERB by MATTHEW PRIOR |