sucking the wordes from her mouth,
the light from her skin [
A HISTORY OF WAR
The fields buckled into earthworks,
breastworks, and the men dug deeper
into their ground. Of course, once
the trenches were cut, they could not
be moved—so the men adorned
the bunkers with card tables, slicked
the walls with posters, poured rum
into mugs they’d brought in from town.
Each morning, they stood-to, glared
down their rifles, through the nets
of barbed wire, the craters and corpses,
the litter of branches, footprints
and shells. Across the way, bayonets
just like theirs aimed back, as if
the parados propped mirrors, as if
their own blackened faces were hard
set against them. Over there, just
as here, the color guard raised the flag,
the captains sloganeered through
their bullhorns. Everyone could hear
the echoing, and everyone roared
and shouted—because such words
were the river that carried them deeper,
that kept them from sinking.
Then, as was the ritual, at nine,
the men climbed down from the firestep,
shot craps on the duckboards, read
treatises in the dugouts on passion
and Passchendaele. Anything to kill
the time between assaults, to black out
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