Gunner

Did they send me away from my cat and my wife

To a doctor who poked me and counted my teeth,

To a line on a plain, to a stove in a tent?

Did I nod in the flies of the schools?

And the fighters rolled into the tracer like rabbits,

The blood froze over my splints like a scab —

Did I snore, all still and grey in the turret,

Till the palms rose out of the sea with my death?

And the world ends here, in the sand of a grave,

All my wars over? How easy it was to die!

Has my wife a pension of so many mice?

Did the medals go home to my cat?