Here we are
in our doughboys and camos, our doughty frocks
with drips of bitter on the sleeve, our passions revving
their pulp to pittance at a gas station
in the city that never peeps —
and here is the city
with its Martians in leather and excoriated thunderbolt-
boas, its Bible-trippers, its vintage bazookas for barter
not sale, its reluctance to be reluctant, its speed
for hire, into which we atrophy ourselves to briefly fit —
and we are never
so close to the joys of oil, the grease inside which a fat
becomes a fit, as we bellow magnanimously praise
on the least well of those who pass, ones who are dying
we salute: we are coming from the war, they are going
to the war —