TRUTH: As in death, so in life, except for the Rulers. Power, Profit, the war breeders.
POET: The dead hug each other closely in the trenches, as brothers.
TRUTH: The living pause awhile, like good farmers, To harvest their crop ;
Carting the carrion heaps to the festering trenches, And peasants, in rags, are made to dig the graves Of peasants in the monkey-garments of the Rulers, Flies buzz up angrily from the staring eyes and open
mouths As the earth is shoveled in. The very air turns sick of the stench. The mangled bodies
are piled thick Into pits of putrefaction.
POET: There lie Music, Poetry, Art, Invention ; Wisdom, Knowl- edge, Beauty, Hope and Love.
TRUTH: Civilization.
POET: I hear a lark, singing from the sky ; And the trill of a blackbird in the rushes by the river. I see a troop of wild ducks flying over the marsh Whose water is red. All Nature is indifferent, though The wounded shriek, and their agony is as the groans of a tempest.
TRUTH: Should Nature despair because of Man's folly? Shall the birds cease to know joy, because the peoples tear each other's throats at the behest of the governors?
no
