looking forward to your long career in the army
the ambitious man
wants to seem thankful
changes his clothes
but keeps the old skin
with books at home
a sword abroad
what a beautiful stone at his head!
just look at the dust where the army has been
the enemy baffled
but isn’t it obvious?
standing mid flags and drums
head high
the dragon is too
too smart to fight
hollow homecoming
no one in the old place now
still the spring bubbles up
flowers wilt to hear the birds weep
the war is centuries past for them
still dust covers the haunts of men
I was fifteen when I went to the war
never built with my hands
never knew woman’s love
I’d tilled the soil
in my half schooled way
now I’m an old man
eighty and more
never came home
till now in this dream
you can’t imagine a road so far
track by the green river banks
goes along
willows all the way
yes eighty years have passed
the village with them
now just dry stones
snake haunts
everything gone to seed
people I pass on the way
look right through me
I want to tell familiar faces
how I met the ancients
how wet through
their clothes were
with tears
as if they’d been caught
without umbrellas
but they were
the sky themselves
all the way home
view clouded with weeping
I felt
if only
I were a ghost
there should
be tears
for me