I AM singing to you Soft as a man with a dead child speaks; Hard as a man in handcuffs, Held where he cannot move: Under the sun Are sixteen million men, Chosen for shining teeth, Sharp eyes, hard legs, And a running of young warm blood in their wrists. And a red juice runs on the green grass; And a red juice soaks the dark soil. And the sixteen million are killing . . . and killing and killing. I never forget them day or night: They beat on my head for memory of them; They pound on my heart and I cry back to them, To their homes and women, dreams and games. I wake in the night and smell the trenches, And hear the low stir of sleepers in lines -- Sixteen million sleepers and pickets in the dark: Some of them long sleepers for always, Some of them tumbling to sleep to-morrow for always, Fixed in the drag of the world's heartbreak, Eating and drinking, toiling . . . on a long job of killing. Sixteen million men. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE RUBAIYAT, 1879 EDITION: 14 by OMAR KHAYYAM THE LETTER by MUHAMMAD AL-MU'TAMID II TO MR. BARBAULD, WITH A MAP OF THE LAND OF MATRIMONY by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD MAN'S INHUMANITY TO MAN by ALBERT LINDLEY BEANE HINC LACHRIMAE; OR THE AUTHOR TO AURORA: 47 by WILLIAM BOSWORTH EAST WIND by ABBIE FARWELL BROWN |