To Good Guys Dead
They sucked us in;
King and country,
Christ
And the rest
They sucked us in;
King and country,
Christ
And the rest
I dreamed of him last night,
I saw his face All radiant and unshadowed of distress,
And as of old, in music measureless,
I heard his golden voice and marked him trace Under the common thing the hidden grace,
A blackbird singing On a moss-upholstered stone,
Bluebells swinging,
Shadows wildly blown,
A song in the wood,
The dark is thrown Back from the brightness, like hair Cast over a shoulder
I am alone,
Four years older;
Like the chairs and the walls Which I once watched brighten With you beside me
My dear,
I wonder if before the end You ever thought about a children’s game— I’m sure you must have played it too—in which You ran along a narrow garden wall Pretending it to be a mountain ledge So steep a snowy darkness fell away On either ...
O guns, fall silent till the dead men hear Above their heads the legions pressing on:(These fought their fight in time of bitter fear,
And died not knowing how the day had gone
)O flashing muzzles, pause, and let them see The coming dawn...
I Stood with the Dead, so forsaken and still:
When dawn was grey I stood with the Dead
And my slow heart said, 'You must kill, you must kill:'Soldier, soldier, morning is red'
On the shapes of the slain in their crumpled disgraceI s...
Row after row with strict
The headstones yield their names to the element,
The wind whirs without recollection;
In the riven troughs the splayed
Who recalls the twilight and the ranged tents in order (Violet peaks uplifted through the crystal evening air
)And the clink of iron teacups and the piteous, noble laughter, And the faces of the Sisters with the dust upon their hair
(Now...
If she had been beautiful, even,
Or wiser than women about her,
Or had moved with a certain defiance;
If she had had sons at her sides,
Empty are the ways,
Empty are the ways of this land And the flowers Bend over with heavy heads
They bend in vain
Empty are the ways of this land Where Ione Walked once, and now does not walk But seems like a person just gone...
An ancient saga tells us
In the beginning the First Cow (For nothing living yet had birth But Elemental Cow on earth) Began to lick cold stones and mud:
Under her warm tongue flesh and blood Blossomed, a miracle to believe: And so was Ad...