Night from a railroad car window
Is a great, dark, soft thing
Broken across with slashes of light.

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.   
Shovel them under and let me work—   
            I am the grass; I cover all.   
   
And pile them high at Gettysburg   
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. 
Shovel them under and let me work.   
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:   
            What place is this?   
            Where are we now?   
   
            I am the grass. 
            Let me work.

In the loam we sleep,
In the cool moist loam,
To the lull of years that pass
And the break of stars,

From the loam, then,
The soft warm loam,
          We rise:
To shape of rose leaf,
Of face and shoulder.

          We stand, then,
          To a whiff of life,
Lifted to the silver of the sun
Over and out of the loam
          A day.