Gunner

Did they send me away from my cat and my wife To a doctor who poked me and counted my teeth, To a line on a plain, to a stove in a tent? Did I nod in the flies of the schools? And the fighters rolled into the tracer like rabbits, The blood froze over my splints like a scab -- Did I snore, all still and grey in the turret, Till the palms rose out of the sea with my death? And the world ends here, in the sand of a grave, All my wars over? How easy it was to die! Has my wife a pension of so many mice? Did the medals go home to my cat?