The Range in the Desert

Where the lizard ran to its little prey

And a man on a horse rode by in a day

They set their hangars: a continent

Taught its conscripts its unloved intent

In the scrawled fire, the singing lead—

Protocols of the quick and dead.

The wounded gunner, his missions done,

Fired absently in the the range's sun;

And, chained with cartridges, the clerk

Sat sweating at his war-time work.

The cold flights bombed—again, again—

The craters of the lunar plain....

All this was priceless: men were paid

For these rehearsals of the raids

That used up cities at a rate

That left the coals without a State

To call another's; till the worse

Ceded at last, without remorse,

Their conquests to their conquerors.

The equations were without two powers.

Profits and death grow marginal:

Only the mourning and the mourned recall

The wars we lose, the wars we win;

And the world is—what it has been.

The lizard's tongue licks angrily

The shattered membranes of the fly.