Dream of the road in front of your house:
   are the soldiers' bodies rotting?

   There were rifle-bearing men:
   no boys in that terribly-tasked army,
   not under their helmets, not inside their clothes;
   they demanded your men to come out
   to save you, so they did.

   You had prayed for mercy, too late:
   it came, a bomb from American air,
   after your men had entered the truck:
   too late, too late, but they will never know.

   And you opened your mouth and held your hands
   over your ears, knowing the twin-tailed
   shark of the sky would come screaming by:
   and it blew fire onto your roof.

   It was time to leave;
   it is time to leave again.
   The Americans point rifles as that other army did;
   one of them told you

   We call the sky shark "Strike Eagle"
   the fast-punching bird-of-prey, you think,
   American nobility not working,
   on the picket line.