*...the pain we  feel at a given moment is more real than the pain we may endure in the future.  This earth with all its charms and beauty is after all the earth of the "exiles of Eve."
-Czeslaw Milosz

commander

the commander's head 

filled with empty dreams 

of a special joy

bobbing in anxious tones

over dead men's bones 

being carried home.

midst shattered nerves 

and tainted hope 

hyped by the illusions  

of a superficial faith 

mourning-morphed 

into empty feelings  

of noisy drunks.

nervous throats 

coughed discomfort  

as if toxic smoke 

from aborted hope 

lay' o'er the graves  

of these recent dead. 

bearing in himself 

the burden of squandered hope

he shuffled to depart 

gathering his notes 

like scattered jacks.

poised to depart 

the monotony of those 

clothed in the earth

a nervous switch of irony 

greets him at the exit door:

a patient parent pleading

he'd bring their children home 

outside flag-draped tombs 

and preferably close to whole.