It was not dying: everybody died
It was not dying: we had died before
In the routine crashes-- and our fields
Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks
And the rates rose, all because of us
We died on the wrong page of the almanac
Scattered on mountains fifty miles away;
Diving on haystacks, fighting with a friend
We blazed up on the lines we never saw
We died like aunts or pets or foreigners
(When we left high school nothing else had died
For us to figure we had died like.)
In our new planes, with our new crews, we bombed
The ranges by the desert or the shore
Fired at towed targets, waited for our scores--
And turned into replacements and woke up
One morning, over England, operational
It wasn't different: but if we died
It was not an accident but a mistake
(But an easy one for anyone to make.)
We read our mail and counted up our missions--
In bombers named for girls, we burned
The cities we had learned about in school--
Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among
The people we had killed and never seen
When we lasted long enough they gave us medals;
When we died they said, 'Our casualties were low.'
They said, 'Here are the maps'; we burned the cities
It was not dying --no, not ever dying;
But the night I died I dreamed that I was dead
And the cities said to me: 'Why are you dying?
We are satisfied, if you are; but why did I die?'