Galleys pour upon the shore,
As a roaring rushing wave
Spills bodies armed for death,
While flashing fires herald gore.
The paltry soldier cuts through the caves
Of the night-sea,
Now stained with gauze and odor.
Maniacal cogs inside him creak,
His plate mail panoply turns to air.
(all he knows is death, death, death
And nothing of despair.)
From hazy firmaments arrows descend,
And rack those too sane to live.
Braced in steel cavalries rend,
Roaring as men blankly survive.
Canons wail the land,
Men lie staring, blazed.
Death's parting blow breaks the hands
On the splitting decks; bodies, all-crazed
Splash from the light, sobbing as the fires
Shear their peach-pink flesh.
Graves at them rush in a viscid red tide
And sink the ships
While vainly captains thresh.
The soldier smiles, for in this deliverance,
He knows freedom greets all who fall.
Moving to a mail-laden dance,
He kills again and again in liberty's thrall.