When bodies broken and all bodies seared
Are counted up, uncrusted, tagged as feared,
We know next day the scene will stand alone
On pages white and mindless of the bone.
Shall notice recognize beyond the burned,
Or caption past the people tritely charred,
Related dusty partness with the term
Antiquity, the sense of death in stone
And knowledge of the previously marred?
On battlefields of Troy or Tuscany
Or other places where techniques engaged,
When warrior fell, or blade or boy enraged,
Of them did campfire journalists of song
Forget collective going, all but pathos,
In wretchedness and fact of having gone?
Accuse the gnostic grammar of old wars:
It maims our grasp of accidental death
Past putting down of papers to decry
Their overlooking what it means to die.
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