Where are we to go when this is done?
Will we slip into old, accustomed ways,
finding remembered notches, one by one?
Thrashing a hapless way through quickening haze?
Who is to know us when the end has come?
Old friends and families, but could we be strange
to the sight and stricken dumb at visions of some pulsing memory?
Who will love us for what we used to be
who now are what we are, bitter or cold?
Who is to nurse us with swift subtlety
back to the warm and feeling human fold?
Where are we to go when this is through?
We are the war-born.
