Into Action

Now with the awakening armies of the future
Is the best time for actual battle, before
They rise upon the living battlefield.

For we still live, and they but stir in sleep,
Unborn, loaded with dying; and corpse dew
Is visible sweating on their ghostly kit.

Encamped upon the deadly field to come,
They have been marring the deep minds of us
With dreamy visitations of thickening terror;

Annihilation, paralyzing our strength:
They are the enemy, and there’s no peace,
And now it is their unborn blood or ours.

And there’s small time; if we should fail, my ghost
Goes out heroic with your ghost heroic
Exploded into night with nothing done.

Then now, while all their battle is still mist,
Their artillery still blueprints, their tanks unshod,
Their gas encylindered, their engines empty,

Let us be breaking them, while still we can,
Now with the increasing strength of our free bodies
That live and move, aware and warned of work.

That the peace may be declared before the war,
Before the happy warrior’s menacing hand
Goes groping out of sleep to lay us low.

Shatter the bayonet still in virgin sheath,
Cut down the future man who carries it,
Into thin air explode the shadow shells!