Battle

Three thousand men in full armor
galloping headlong into some distant battle;
the trembling hearts, the straining muscles,
the pitch and silence of time strung out
like fairy lights along a moment.

The dream of it, the violence.

The aching hearts reaching back across
the wave of motion for any time
before now, any time where simplicity
reigned as simply as it did now,
without the vigilance, without the threat,
without water and blood and mud
and screaming shouts of souls escaping
in mystery streams of echoing dead men,
each dead, each alive, each mustering
within that space

within that time

as if it were nothing but a blade of grass
divided 10,000 by 10,000 times.

Then stop

and then

Shock.