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 in 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 to-morrow for always,
Fixed in the drag of the world's heartbreak,
Eating and drinking, toiling. . . on a long job of
killing.
Sixteen million men.
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Comments
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16 million
16 million, those up right, straight arrow men, those gonna show 'em and give 'em hell again.
16 million, and not a villian amoungst 'em
speaking in one voice their truth of tungston -
the Purcells,
It's about killers. Did you not get the title? I mean it's so evident and hits you right in the face and tells you what it's about.
Of course it could be about other things. About protest in war. About those who protest in wars and call those who fight in wars killers. And they are. If they kill someone they are a killer. But the question in the end is, are they murderer's? Well we all have our differing opinions on the subject so not much point in delving into it here.
I believe this is concerning perhaps WW2. But not just about one side but about all the sides. For one side would think one are killers and the other murderers but would not the soldier themself think it was just war?
Of course this could be about the opposite, it could be about anything really. But the main focus I feel is about killing.
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what is this poem about?
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