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