We Were All At Once

Life Is A Disease, Brother, And Death Begins Already At Birth. Every Breath, Every Heartbeat, Is A Moment Of Dying - A Little Shove Toward The End.

But Now, For The First Time, I See You Are A Man Like Me. I Thought Of Your Hand-grenades, Of Your Bayonet, Of Your Rifle; Now I See Your Wife And Your Face And Our Fellowship. Forgive Me, Comrade. We Always See It Too Late. Why Do They Never Tell Us That You Are Poor Devils Like Us, That Your Mothers Are Just As Anxious As Ours, And That We Have The Same Fear Of Death, And The Same Dying And The Same Agony - Forgive Me, Comrade; How Could You Be My Enemy?

We Were Eighteen And Had Begun To Love Life And The World; And We Had To Shoot It To Pieces.

I Am Young, I Am Twenty Years Old; Yet I Know Nothing Of Life But Despair, Death, Fear, And Fatuous Superficiality Cast Over An Abyss Of Sorrow. I See How Peoples Are Set Against One Another, And In Silence, Unknowingly, Foolishly, Obediently, Innocently Slay One Another.

Bombardment, Barrage, Curtain-fire, Mines, Gas, Tanks, Machine-guns, Hand-grenades - Words, Words, But They Hold The Horror Of The World.