"You're bloody right - I was a Red," <br />The Man from Cook's morosely said. <br />And if our chaps had won the War <br />Today I'd be the Governor <br />Of all Madrid, and rule with pride, <br />Instead of just a lousy guide. <br /> <br />"For I could talk in Councils high <br />To draw down angels from the sky. <br />They put me seven years in gaol, - <br />You see how I am prison-pale . . . <br />Death sentence! Each dawn I thought <br />They'd drag me out and have me shot. <br /> <br />"Maybe far better if they had: <br />Suspense like that can make one mad. <br />Yet here I am serene and sane, <br />And at your service to explain <br />That gory battlefield out there, <br />The Cité Universitaire. <br /> <br />"See! Where the Marzanillo flows, <br />The women used to wash our cloths; <br />And often, even in its flood, <br />It would be purpled by our blood. <br />Contemptuous of shot and shell <br />Our women sang and - fought like hell. <br /> <br />"Deep trenches there ran up and down, <br />And linked us with the sightless town; <br />And every morn and every night <br />We sallied savagely to fight . . . <br />By yon ravine in broken clad <br />I shot and killed a soldier lad. <br /> <br />"Such boys they were: methinks that one <br />Looked to me like my only son. <br />He might have been; they told my wife <br />Before Madrid he lost his life. <br />Sweet Mary! Oh if I but knew <br />It was not my own son I slew. . . ." <br /> <br />So spoke that man with eye remote <br />And stains of gravy on his coat; <br />I offered him a cigarette, <br />And as he sighed with vain regret, <br />Said he: "Don't change your dollars - wait: <br />I'll get you twice the market rate."<br /><br />Robert William Service<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-man-from-cook-s/
