O, sweet slight friend

Who frolics free

O'er cactus plain

Or sandy lee,

No one can lonely

Long remain

While hearkening to

Thy blithe refrain

When meal time comes

Thy friendly face

Is everywhere about

The place.

You taste the coffee

Eat oatmeal

And from the cakes the

Syrup steal.

And though we know that

You have been

On the hot turds

In some latrine,

And while you sipped

The dainties there

You gathered germs in

Your long hair,

To spread them

Wantonly upon

Each dainty meat

Or new baked bun.

Still, we can't blame you

For we know

That all we eat

To shit will go.

And after meals

When we would feign

Seek Morpheus' arms

From labor pain,

You gently break

Our sweet repose

By deftly fucking

In our nose.

Our ears and mouths

You then explore

And leave there

Pus from some old sore.

Then when at night

You needs must sleep

Onto our tented

Roofs you creep.

And when the Witching

Hour has come

Your dainty farts

Pervade the gloom,

While like the dews

From heaven fall

Your tiny turds

So round and small.

And if in battle

We should die

Around us first

Would swarm the fly.

You'd do your best

To ease the pain

And swarm around

Each oozing vein.

Yes, in memoria to

A friend

A hundred thousand

Eggs you'd lend.

And as through maggots

Sent by you

Our gruesome corpse

More gruesome grew.

You'd swarm in myriads

Feasting high

You'd hum our dirge

You goddamned fly!

The road of the battle languished,

The hate from the guns was still,

While the moon rose up from a smoke cloud,

And looked at the dead on the hill.

Pale was her face with anguish,

Wet were her eyes with tears,

As she gazed on the twisted corpses,

Cut off in their earliest years.

Some were bit by the bullet,

Some were kissed by the steel,

Some were crushed by the cannon,

But all were still, how still!

The smoke wreaths hung in the hollows,

The blood stink rose in the air;

And the moon looked down in pity,

At the poor dead lying there.

Light of their childhood's wonder,

Moon of their puppy love,

Goal of their first ambition,

She watched them from above.

Yet not with regret she mourned them,

Fair slain on the field of strife,

Fools only lament the hero,

Who gives for faith his life.

She sighed for the lives extinguished,

She wept for the loves that grieve,

But she glowed with pride on seeing,

That manhood still doth live.

The moon sailed on contented,

Above the heaps of slain,

For she saw that manhood liveth,

And honor breathes again.