Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight? Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows, Drooping tongues from jays that slob their relish, Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked? 
Stroke on stroke of pain,- but what slow panic, Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets? 
Ever from their hair and through their hands' palms Misery swelters. Surely we have perished Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish? 

-These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished. Memory fingers in their hair of murders, Multitudinous murders they once witnessed. Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander, Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter. Always they must see these things and hear them, Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles, Carnage incomparable, and human squander Rucked too thick for these men's extrication. 

Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented Back into their brains, because on their sense Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black; Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh. -Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous, Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses. -Thus their hands are plucking at each other; Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging; Snatching after us who smote them, brother, Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.

Of razor love, the tremor of Serrated do-good and Death – the romance of rubble and sweat for the Garland duper; his chair set in shimmers. And the partisan: by all limbs caught in Paragon persuasion, and sidling a rucked Facade of slanting, impelled by the moiling of Ivory globes.

A slave to the arms that Wrench his Knees forward, in the obscene; For his Hands fell fastened in a damp shawl to the Masquerade Man. And the patter of Drums and Trumpets; his nutrition a wavering moan of Dukes laid out in colour – Staring thick and deep into hues that Glide shameless.

But who might Die to conclude these Noble? Halt them of their filicide fluke behind Flagpole Glory: And at dusk, the sound of the Paladins home; a sprinkle on his Terror. His chest, the Heroes cavern – behold the throbbing numbness of Foreign necks.

Faceless was the Villain he saw in those scripted dreams; loosening dreams, tied up in delusion. The Shadows that were slain, bursting from the walls behind him, Prehensile like his mind. Thus in heads, the Clemency of men unbound from their crimson Fright, squelch at him with the dignity of Alms.

But why still?– the Din of Daylight curfew in minds that question? The Paladin; his home now the Pedant of his own cruelty; a Strange steading of the menial, not hitched.

For Behold, the Garland duper; a man Sunk in deep Sage for the eyes; those Ivory Globes in a twisted thrall – his Chair set in shimmers.

All in which sense is the slurring of castigation poured; Remarks stumbled from Woven sockets, deranged like statuary behind teeth – Eyes sullen like fatuous Nativity on Pause. Rolling, perpetual past dawns, rewinding Dusk as if Greed plunged between my toes, grappling, Slung like Evil. Battering on a Step, thence from Ignorant forging - Capped by Jingo and all things Lies.

Tell me again, by Which crippling of the Nerves; the Jarring of skulls, ossified like Rage in affiliation. Call upon the bargain of the enslaved; The free – Sad in a Prosaic march, loose like description. All incredulous in a single-file of death: but a prole Dare not uproot his Cage.

The Malignancy of Graves; the Danger past the bars – keeps all similar in solitude. Pushing bricks that build Bombs; ambling in streets that Rehash the soul, toiling to own what you had Made. Born, bereaved like Life in confinement painted Blue, and dancing, cramped between stagnant walls.

As I slumped into rest; into Fantasies of night's Dreams, so empty was the Voice of my Liberty: others Liberty. those ugly Dwellings of strange faced men I wished to die, for those screens told me why. O' should the private homage of War say– to free a people?

The percussion of the bombs; those groaning Sirens of strafing plumes, plummeting like Cirrus clouds overhead. The harassed screeching of the Guns, Machines jumping bullets into the earth in a Cluster of thrashing dust, boring out the flesh of those; smothering up the air with spits of silt and blood disguised in black.

A mad infused ferocity of screams; the Horrors of deranged, clipped-macabre perfumes, stirred in a mixing pot of rifle Flash– fringing peripheral– and All minds blazing in a spherical stove of Silent alarms; a Blotched out memoranda of Follies dwelled on in violent Reels.

For the floor is now a roofless grave of Children, Fathers, Uncles– half-human; a mesh of limbs sprawled across battered Pavements, licked up by a Battery of mayhem. But look at them... their eyes are dead now as they were before, cramped wicked into a forced Congregation, plastered to the ground; clothes incinerated– those naked flesh heaps of things– monstrous things that had held breath in their lungs, laughed like us.

Curtesy of King, Queen and Country, Patrie, Uncle Sam and so on a so forth. Hammered into the Hero who saw a floor of rodents, because his mind had been stolen by the Epithet. Those things brandished discoloured faces to him, and wore the Uniform of the depraved.

So– good hearted, Righteous men; Heroes so we must say. Who hang on Hues, as would I; Seeing those and no more– Kill, maim, Torture– In my Name and in Liberty.

Soldiers: Shoot at the ground if you must, for the barrel can't rise fast enough to bludgeon those evil. Shoot at him again– at his chest this time, to Scrape out from his soul an unwilling passion of blood; wrench out a Monstrosity of cries he had not wished to share with us.

For we are the murderers: Righteous murderers.

Tell me- Do you not see the crumble in these bricks? Their passing silt; sad should the wind know of this. You see, don't you-The cracks- they spill the truth of these walls.

Look with me Brother. Watch as the pavement waits unmoved in our years; our sweat not dripping from these nooses. Watch how calm our necks placed between them.

And at the ringing: still ringing shrill – no waver should try divert our step. It is to the assigned now, you see, for all in shackles; Swiftly to the cells in which we sit, forever not knowing why. Dabbling in thoughts we should not think.

Do you know why, my Friend? Why this youth I so possessed, should be tarnished, switched in night as I sunk in prospect; ill-interwined conjecture – Please, rid the Contrite of birth upon naked Culture.

And do not ask of those Dreams, it would seem I have forgotten now, why I ever dreamed. You see, I look into those gates as I trudge down before them, the Winds silencing the rushing of the Roads. Mad men-running free and sane toward emptiness and...

and then Normality shoves me in line again. Friend, please quite the Crowds now: they mutter too Contently upon their scripts.