This country could have been paradise:

it’s a den of fire.

We’ve been advancing for four days,

we’ve not eaten for four days.

In this strange, bright hour

we don’t need earth’s bread:

the Lord’s Word

is better nourishment.

The blood-filled weeks

are blinding, insubstantial;

shrapnel bursts over my head,

knives fly faster than birds.

I shout, my voice wild,

“That’s brass banging on brass!”

I carry a Great Idea,

I cannot die, I cannot.

Like thunder hammering,

like angry sea-waves,

Russia’s golden heart

beats steadily in my chest.

And how sweet to dress Victory,

like a girl, in ropes of pearls,

as you follow the enemy’s

smoke-covered retreating tracks.