For a saving grace, we didn't see our dead, <br />Who rarely bothered coming home to die <br />But simply stayed away out there <br />In the clean war, the war in the air. <br /> <br />Seldom the ghosts come back bearing their tales <br />Of hitting the earth, the incompressible sea, <br />But stayed up there in the relative wind, <br />Shades fading in the mind, <br /> <br />Who had no graves but only epitaphs <br />Where never so many spoke for never so few: <br />Per ardua, said the partisans of Mars, <br />Per aspera, to the stars. <br /> <br />That was the good war, the war we won <br />As if there was no death, for goodness's sake. <br />With the help of the losers we left out there <br />In the air, in the empty air.<br /><br />Howard Nemerov<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-war-in-the-air/
