Easy as an exquisite corpse paraphrased 
as dictionaried as a pontificator

raised by the thump of the 146 bus— 
these 16 are for you. Shout out

to the city warblers yelling in slanted 
syllables on avenues porous

with ill-built adornments & horse-riding 
monuments. These 16 are for you:

linebreakers & trash talkers, polysyllabic 
halfsteppers ready to mom’s spaghetti

their one opportunity. Meanwhile, 
the rooftop across from us undercuts

the sunsetted skyline & is topped with 
two metric heretics dressed

like crows. Another bullheaded poet 
ina Bulls hat rests his elbows

on the bench back & wonders if 
it is his hoarse verse or the verbed

streetlights making ellipsis from 
the veritable trees & inevitable breezes. 

I who, conceived beneath another star, 
Had been a prince and played with life, instead 
Have been its slave, an outcast exiled far 
From the fair things my faith has merited. 
My ways have been the ways that wanderers tread 
And those that make romance of poverty— 
Soldier, I shared the soldier’s board and bed, 
And Joy has been a thing more oft to me 
Whispered by summer wind and summer sea 
Than known incarnate in the hours it lies 
All warm against our hearts and laughs into our eyes.

I know not if in risking my best days 
I shall leave utterly behind me here 
This dream that lightened me through lonesome ways 
And that no disappointment made less dear; 
Sometimes I think that, where the hilltops rear 
Their white entrenchments back of tangled wire, 
Behind the mist Death only can make clear, 
There, like Brunhilde ringed with flaming fire, 
Lies what shall ease my heart’s immense desire: 
There, where beyond the horror and the pain 
Only the brave shall pass, only the strong attain.

Truth or delusion, be it as it may, 
Yet think it true, dear friends, for, thinking so, 
That thought shall nerve our sinews on the day 
When to the last assault our bugles blow: 
Reckless of pain and peril we shall go, 
Heads high and hearts aflame and bayonets bare, 
And we shall brave eternity as though 
Eyes looked on us in which we would seem fair— 
One waited in whose presence we would wear, 
Even as a lover who would be well-seen, 
Our manhood faultless and our honor clean.