I Don't Ask Myself, Is

After All My Years Of Playing Soldiers, And Then Of Reading History, I Have Almost A Mania To Be In The East, To See Fighting, And To Serve.

I Dreamed Kind Jesus Fouled The Big-gun Gears; And Caused A Permanent Stoppage In All Bolts; And Buckled With A Smile Mausers And Colts; And Rusted Every Bayonet With His Tears.

Numbers Of The Old People Cannot Read. Those Who Can Seldom Do

Ambition May Be Defined As The Willingness To Receive Any Number Of Hits On The Nose.

I Am Not Concerned With Poetry. My Subject Is War, And The Pity Of War. The Poetry Is In The Pity. Yet These Elegies Are To This Generation In No Sense Conciliatory. They May Be To The Next. All A Poet Can Do Today Is Warn. That Is Why The True Poets Must Be Truthful.