Kipling's Ass

The Hun is at the gate! A driven foe,

I know you love to hear how Germans die.

for body, soul an iron sacrifice.

'Ach Kamerad' they cry, then squeal like stoats.

Atrocities engorged as scarlet crazy

squirts spawn about the corpses of old toads;

menagerie of carrion and waste

shambles across a century of crows.

And then, in boiling shards of poignant beauty,

(wolves graze, and dust becomes the serpent's meat)

through a becalmed and still reflective maunder,

(trusting a day there shall be no more shooting)

erupt emotions - soaring, wheeling fleets,

leap into hope that even war surrender.