The cattle bawl and bawl and will not
leave off associating me with them.

Importunacy get its way --
Ask and it shall be given --

just as the meek shall inherit,
the askers shall receive.

Eight-thousand-two-hundred-and-forty-six men
died on the Western Front twenty-six September,

nineteen-hundred-and-fifteen in three-and-a-hours.
Soldiers, on foot, mowed down like grass

scythed to be bundled on a field
cleared with hand tools.

The cattle never see me; armed,
the soldiers died in columns on a gentle slope.

The opposition lay in trenches
behind barbed wire with hands on machine-guns.

Imagimagination is credited for new techniques,
experience and compassion for survivors.

Plowshares and weapons,
work upon work.

What difference does it make,
if in our labor,

we turn and bury
all that precedes us.