Guns crashing,
Thudding,
Ululating,
Tumultuous.
Guns yelping over the cracked earth,
Where dry bugles blare.
Here in this hollow
It is very quiet,
Only the wind's hissing laughter
In the place of tombs.
One by one these gaunt scarred faces
Lift up blurred wrinkled inscriptions
Silently beseeching me to stop and ponder.
What does it matter if I do not stop to read them?
No one at all has gone this way that I have chosen before.
Guns booming,
Bellowing,
Crashing,
Desperate.
Insistent outcry of savage guns,
Rocking the gloomy hollow.
I will run out like the wind,
Snarling, with savage laughter;
Like the wind that tosses the grey-black clouds,
Against the shot-racked barrier of flaming trees.
I will race between the grey guns,
And the clouds, like shrapnel exploding,
Flinging their hail through the tumult,
Bursting, will melt in cold spray.
I am the wanderer of the world;
No one can hold me.
Not the cannon assembled for battle,
Nor the gloomy graves of the hollow,
Nor the house where I long time slumbered,
Nor the hilltop where roads are straggling.
My feet must march to the wind.
Like a leaf dropping slowly,
An orange butterfly turning and twisting,
I touch with moist passionate palms the leaden inscriptions
Of my past. Then I turn to depart.