Treasure spilled on the beaches
Thrown down in vain, over mundanities.
What will his poor mother say,
When this news
Reaches Schenectady?
Those who never served nod and pontificate.
The war may be over for the dead,
But never for that small circle of survivors,
Who mourn quietly, with nodding heads
And Commiserate.
And never for those who spend
Our treasure like a drunkard with a hot twenty,
And seek to decorate their hollow lives
With meaning they will
Never comprehend.
What can they say that is more than prattle,
To those who have paid
With their wombs and their lives?
And still the mothers awaken, sweating,
Knowing only what they lost
In battle.
