Like a horse ridden by the general
I pick my way through a life of terror,
desperate to be insensate, to put my foot
ahead of the other without triggering an explosion.
Again and again, goaded, tricked, lost
I plod ahead, deaf to the dead, bereft
of bravado. I look for my stable, step over
brass buttons on the waistcoat of corpses,
epaulettes in the mud, faces from my past.
I snuffle, it means nothing. I seek the break
between fire and fulmination that is the quick,
the green, to carry the general to safety.

Now I feed in pasture though I do not
know what it means, nor where I have been.

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