All night they marched, the infantry under pack,
But the hands gripping the rifles were naked bone
And the hollow pits of the eyes stared, vacant and black
When the moonlight shown.
The gas mask lay like a blot on the empty chest,
The slanting helmets were spattered with rust and mold,
But they burrowed the hill for the machine-gun nest
As they had of old.
And the guns rolled, and the tanks, but there was no sound,
Never the gasp or rustle of living men
Where the skeletons strung their wire on disputed ground....
I knew them, then.
"It is seventeen years," I cried. "You must come no more.
We know your names. We know that you are the dead.
Must you march forever from France and the last, blind war?"
"Fool! From the next!" they said.
-Stephen Vincent Benét
©2013 Rough Magic Creations
Mollie, I am wiping the smirk off my face in the wake of the above prose and pictorial ... ((I was secretly musing over the Rough Magic Mollie--yep, that would be you!))
ReplyDeleteThank you for including me here and for the sensitive portrayal. May we never take any of that for granted. Happy Labor Day weekend to you and Joe...and hey, I may join you for a cup of coffee.
xxoo pam