The Song of War

From the lull the song begins
With marching feet
That set the beat,
Keeping time, each step they meet
As sure, foreboding sins.

Soon join the commanding shouts,
"Shoot! Shoot! Shoot until
With bullets, you, their bodies fill!
The enemy you must kill!"
No time for faultering doubts.

Next to the din: the firing gun,
And with the ascension
Of building tension
The added mention
That blood will run.

Here the cries and screams insue;
The bloody melody when
The tortured, dying men
Forsee the hand of death, for then
A bullet cuts them through.