After twenty years in France
Do you dream in French my son?...
Home ... ça existe encore.
Still, still exists Flagg Bros. store,
With new glass front, but behind
The dilapidated sheds
And packed road lined with maypops
Where you talked to the white horse.

Gloved, hatted, I kneel here
Where you by the sky-blue windows
Sang " Onward Christian Soldiers. "
For I have needed pardon
Since the morning we found Dad
In the garage (It is hard
To be a father without
A son). I screamed, and without
A son to be a widow.
Shall I pray your pardon too?
Prince of Peace, absolve all warriors,
My warrior of the bow and arrow.
Your old girl married money.
She's grown stout. ( He has ulcers.)

Last year they were in Nice
Not Normandy. . . .
My glove's rouge, with lipstick
Or with teeth. . . . Curse men , curse free
God vault your freedom!

Oh the acres of undistinguished
Crosses make me sick.
Mother could mark Papa's grave
In the churchyard a mile from home,
By its firs and shaft. . . .
Your nothing grave ...

Shame!
God I am of little understanding. . . .
But with God all things are possible. . . .
Give my son another life —
A Norwood ugliness, a bourgeois rot,
Dust and concrete, Falcons and Mustangs, not ...