The tombstone told when she died.
Her two surnames stopped me still.
A virgin married at rest.
She married in this pouring place,
That I struck one day by luck,
Before I heard in my mother’s side
Or saw in the looking-glass shell
The rain through her cold heart speak
And the sun killed in her face.
More the thick stone cannot tell.

Before she lay on a stranger’s bed
With a hand plunged through her hair,
Or that rainy tongue beat back
Through the devilish years and innocent deaths
To the room of a secret child,
Among men later I heard it said
She cried her white-dressed limbs were bare
And her red lips were kissed black,
She wept in her pain and made mouths,
Talked and tore though her eyes smiled.

I who saw in a hurried film
Death and this mad heroine
Meet once on a mortal wall,
Heard her speak through the chipped beak
Of the stone bird guarding her:
I died before bedtime came
But my womb was bellowing
And I felt with my bare fall
A blazing red harsh head tear up
And the dear floods of his hair.

It's always been a mystery
Why there's no word in history of the Battle of Copenhagen.

There's never been a parallel
So far as ever l've heard tell
To the fighting and the biting
And the smashing and the crashing
And the lashing and the slashing
And the gnashing and the gashing,
To the yellishness and smellishness
And international hellishness of the Battle of Copenhagen.

Ten thousand stalwart Swedes
Advancing through the weeds to the Battle of Copenhagen.

Unlimited Italians
In column of batallions at the Battle of Copenhagen.

Ten tribes of red Pawnees
Were sulking behind trees at the Battle of Copenhagen.

A platoon of Albanians,
Supported by Ukranians
And also some Roumanians,
The dull ones and the brainy ones, at the Battle of Copenhagen.

Three thousand greasy Greeks,
Arrayed in leathern breeks
And smelling strong of leeks, at the Battle of Copenhagen.

A quantity of Turks
All waving bloody dirks at the Battle of Copenhagen.

Six hundred Abyssinians,
The fat ones and the skinny ones;
Two hundred of the Czeck
With their battle cry, "By Hzeck!" at the Battle of Copenhagen.

Eighteen hundred Scots,
Their plaidies tied in knots
And dangling pewter pots
(The dirty, low-down sots!) at the Battle of Copenhagen.

Two hundred Asiatics
In vari-colored Batiks—
A company of Japs
Bravely shooting craps—
A myriad of Mongolians,
The sinful and the holy ones,
With their friends, two Anatolians at the Battle of Copenhagen.

From out the Boreal Regions
Came a handful of Norwegians
To oppose these countless legions in the Battle of Copenhagen.

A half a million Jews
Ran back to tell the news of the Battle of Copenhagen.