At_Last

The Empty Dance G.F.E. McGuiness

If this muck should ever clear And morrow's scholars' civil quest Unearth the forms that wallow here, What catch would time invest? Gone men, millions, cast in stone Along this soulless killing lode, Perverted forms of hoary bone With arms in common circled pose. Five hundred miles of seeping land Barren of an inch to rest Where wire barbs carve brow and hand As bullets flail the chest. Entrenched illusions fill with rain, While last deceptions drown in gluts Of flesh gone rotten peeled with pain, A mud of human blood and guts. Rifles fall, As vapors rise From entrails, twisting forms disguised As far away and overdue Pleasures, in this squalid stew Of men in masks, of mustard gas, And flies that shroud dead eyes from view. How I survived... No, That's not true. Lonely,

Lonely men away from her, Little else within them stirs. Away, away, Away from home, She is all they' ve ever known. She was all I ever knew.

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