VI

“It was not for a sacred cause,

Nor for faith, nor for new generations,

That unburied we roll and float

Beneath this flaming tumult of drunken sleep-flowers.

But it was for a mad adventure,

Something we longed for, poisonous, seductive,

That we dared go out in the night together,

Towards the glow that called us,

On the unsown fields of death.

“Now we lie here reaped, ungarnered,

Red swaths of a new harvest:

But you who follow after,

Must struggle with our dream:

And out of its restless and oppressive night,

Filled with blue fumes, dull, choking,

You will draw hints of that vision

Which we hold aloof in silence.”