Remembered Women

For a woman's face remembered as a spot of quick light on the flat land of dark night,

For this memory of one mouth and a forehead they go on in the gray rain and the mud, they go on among the boots and guns.

The horizon ahead is a thousand fang flashes, it is a row of teeth that bite on the flanks of night, the horizon sings of a new kill and a big kill.

The horizon behind is a wall of dark etched with a memory, fixed with a woman's face — they fight on and on, boots in the mud and heads in the gray rain — for the women they hate and the women they love — for the women they left behind, they fight on.