Killers

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 m 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 tomorrow for always,
Fixed in the drag of the world’s heartbreak, 
Eating and drinking, toiling on a long job of killing 
Sixteen million men