outlives the cause, The field mouse hears
the sigh of what survives, and the scratching
of a pencil on a paper scrap
records what is drowned out
by rhetoric and explosions. Whenever I need to retreat
from anthems, I seek asylum in
these pages whose binding

resists the passage of time
and in whose print I find the moment
in which a man whose orders were to kill
confesses to himself
that when men toss their careless lives away
...joy becomes an idiot’s grin.