The lights are beginning to go out in the barracks.
They persist or return, as the wakeful hollow,
But only for an instant; then the windows blacken
For all the hours of the soldier’s life.
It is life into which he composes his body.
He covers his ears with his pillow, and begins to drift
(Like the plumes the barracks trail into the sky)
Past the laughs, the quarrels, and the breath of others
To the ignorant countries where civilians die
Inefficiently, in their spare time, for nothing. …
The curved roads hopping through the aimless green
Dismay him, and the cottages where people cry
For themselves and, sometimes, for the absent soldier
Who inches through hedges where the hunters sprawl
For birds, for birds; who turns in ecstasy
Before the slow small fires the women light,
His charmed limbs, all endearing from the tub.
He dozes, and the washed locks trail like flax
Down the dark face; and the unaccusing eyes
That even the dream’s eyes are averted from
See the wind puff down the chimney, warm the hands
White with the blossoms it pretends are snow….
He moans like a bear in his enchanted sleep,
And the grave mysterious beings of his years
The Causes that mourn above his agony like trees
Are moved for their child, and bend across his limbs
The one face opening for his life, the eyes
That look without shame even into his.
And the child awakes, and sees around his life
The night that is never silent-broken with the sighs
And patient breathing of the dark companions
With whom he labors, sleeps, and dies.
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