They are doughboys, of doughboy bearing,
shot in the thick-soled brownshoes of trainees,
the high necks and wide brims to be foregone,
and the camp and company of that lost peace.
Here they affected their final rank and file,
from which they recovered to western fronts
to short the batteries of the Kaiser
and oppose the shockwaves of his troopers.
They advanced without water, with inadequate
supplies, they lost their weapons but drove on,
when they lost their arms they went without them,
and then without feet and without stomachs.
They dug into the Argonne, buried Belleau Wood,
planted the trenches of forests, seeded their faults;
they lay down at their funerals in those forests,
leaving issue and rations to remainder,
and this rifle-long photo for my study,
in which these soldiers-to-end-all-soldiers
give up their fathering, give to the living
the next invention, the next impossible President.
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