Two robins bevel the air a little with their twitting.

With magnificent audacity they are building their nest.

within the tense circle of a cannon's muzzle.

See this tank here: an outrageous daisy announces himself through A space in the track,

Grinning at having escaped the weight that on every side Squeezes the earth dry.

The white or red star, or the angled sun or round, whatever magic sign Decorated it is painted over with dull rust paint.

Its nationality so gone, it waits in toad-brained patience

With its anonymous fellows.

Another tank sits in its original white paint, now shredding into chips. Stencils on its side mark it Italian;

It is decorated with an awkward-colored bird in a circle,

The standard now of a company of ghosts.

Penciled on its side, faint with seasons, can just be read, "P. Scatoro Greensboro Mass."

Mechanical church bells roll across the morning,

Calling the faithful to the wooden house of the Lord of Hosts. Contending for the same hour recorded bugles crack from far-off plastic loudspeakers

To tell the guard that one more long night watch is ended;

That the time for challenging is past,

Until the night comes again.

Going across the moon-dry embankment of the railroad tracks Sunday afternoon

I met Red coming in civies from the club.

All unknowing in his young innocence,

He fingered his ample cod as he showed me, unasked,

Still another letter (embellished with childishly drawn arrowpierced hearts)

He had received from the photograph of a heavy girl in Akron. Whom he tells me, all unasked, he strongly loves.

Yet his lovely face was discolored from a fight he had been in

To prove, no doubt, how manly he was,

And I thought I could see the black skull shining through

Just below his face.

Sitting on flatcars up the line were three great Jupiters,

Huge and unbelievably ugly,

Patience in the sunlight, dreaming of cities to eat.

Red had a transistor radio, and the wild music from it played on and on.

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