Sure enough, moving, the thunder became men,

Ten thousand, men hewn and tumbling,

Mobs of ten thousand, clashing together,

This way and that.

Slowly, one man, savager than the rest,

Rose up, tallest, in the black sun,

Stood up straight in the air, struck off

The clutch of the others.

And, according to the composer, this butcher,

Held in his hand the suave egg-diamond

That had flashed (like vicious music that ends

In transparent accords).

It would have been better, the time conceived,

To have had him holding—what?

His arm would be trembling, he would be weak,

Even though he shouted.

The sky would be full of bodies like wood.

There would have been the cries of the dead

And the living would be speaking,

As a self that lives on itself.

It would have been better for his hands

To be convulsed, to have remained the hands

Of one wilder than the rest (like music blunted,

Yet the sound of that).