Eleven Hundred Per Day

Night in this place and night across the world
Starry cloudy sky turned black with redness
Steel and fire and oil and flesh and salt
And roar and silence and women crying someplace else.

White and green and cloth and steel
Ghosts with clean hands in the hallways
One of the youngest remains when others go home
One to wait and remember and know and report.

This new Hastings this revenge on Hengest
This arm reaching into the Sleeve instead of out
Iron and coal to return the favor of wood and cloth
The ocean flowing backwards the Sea Lion flying in reverse.

Hands hard and cracked and lying still with yellow nails
Hands with blue and brown in lines and spots
Hands that grasped a world a world away
Like stone like wood like iron and now like water.

Lost arms and lost arms in the sand lying
The living carrying arms or their arms or their legs
Love of a nation spilled on the cement
Power of a nation impaled on little bits of lead.

Night and morning and very little sleep
For those who wait another longest day and night
The outcome certain but not yet established
The body that loved unto death dying slowly.

Stepping over neighbors who loved as much as themselves
Killing neighbors further away looking into their eyes
At the top of the hill stopping for a moment
Hell behind and hell ahead and heaven everywhere.

White face on white then gray face on powder blue
Moved from bed to box to ground to memory
The real heroes are still there he once protested
Accepting his flag his widow thought otherwise.