That wrenches gum-boot down from bleeding heel

And cakes in itching arm-pits, navel, ears:

Men stunned to brainlessness, and gibbering:

Men driving men to death and worse than death:

Men maimed and blinded: men against machines—

Flesh versus iron, concrete, flame and wire:

Men choking out their souls in poison-gas:

Men squelched into the slime by trampling feet:

Men, disembowelled by guns five miles away,

Cursing, with their last breath, the living God