Do you hear the loud noise?

That was merely a shell

Bursting among schoolchildren.

Do you see the glow in the Eastern skies?

That is not the sun rising—it is real blood

Can you smell

An odour from a feast?

No feast! That odour is from the stinking

Entrails of a poet or it maybe a priest

Who thought no law could stop a man from thinking

They are playing a military air somewhere

And the old pulse leaps

Soldierly. I wish you wouldn’t stare

There is nothing in those heaps

But a few hundred common corpses

Dung for the State. The harvest will be good

Glory glory soldier glory

No cause now for dogs to worry

Every water-table runs

With a red promethean flood

Mangled flesh and dusty blood

Soldiers, soldiers to your guns.