Send back the uniforms. Send back the generous Reich. . Send us back to our lives. On the waving blue wild. And remove every mark. Down to the waterline.
How could I have seen them. Their faces and distant lives. Shells in the ocean. . Just a mark. Laid on the map lines. To drown in the ocean's rise. Or burn in a heat wave.
Effortless gulls in the wake. Silver and white on the bow. As the island is broken away. From the world. . Bandages pulled from the eyes. The violent surging of life.
In the burning daze. Of unnatural light. I took a long drive. Into the evening. . On the barracks road. Past the generals' eyes. Down to the seawall. Where the waves stand by.
In a power dive. In a slow burn. Over ancient fields. Over islands. . From the slope and the rise. Of the mainland. Unfamiliar shapes. . Through the atmosphere.
Gone from the house to the snows. Like a wandering light. You send a last balloon. To the solemn light of the moon's eye. . Over the fields. And the arcs of the radial lines.
My brother stands at the end of the line. My children at the breaking wall. The clouds is opening over the earth. The palms a dark and waving wall. And we call back to the old familiar life.
Walk him up and down the corridors. Till his arms are tired. Till his lungs are tired. . Starve him of the air, the dimming light. Till his eyes are wide.
By shadowing. All the darkened fields. Of forgotten words. And civilian lives. . Violence. Through the changing guards. Through the grinding away. And their furious marching.
Come down from the lion's back. Call down to the endless sleepers. Give life to the dimming days. That run in an endless stream now. . In the black of the eye.
A calm then, the roaring wall of the eye. As we sailed to the world from an insular life. From the boughs that had sheltered us all of our lives. From the sun's red blooming.