Our Soldiers

Their life’s the war’s. By following any street Your feet will find the sand at their end. Barbed wires serve for fences. The land is shaken Like a dune by all the bombs that waken, Blinding from sky to eye. There’s a calm seat Where Generals sit who fight the war no more- Aged, but hard and stony to the core, To whom the battle was a trusted friend. About the long-lived, huddled Army-camp Their talk assumes the shifting sand’s undertone ; Their motions go like gradual grains blown down, And each soldier stands on the desert alone. Even when they group in waiting idleness The war’s pain stays about them ; they confess In every mood they are the battle’s own. Their tanks who tread the street go mean and neat Like lips whose words and wails, complete ; Their loves, too, serve the wars who stay at home While their soldiers iron vessels roar and roam. Every longing hearts a tank, and they, its crew- Their life’s the war’s ; sometimes their death is, too!