we’re used to the contorted art of broken bodies,
stumps instead of arms and legs, bloody skulls,
shattered bones and open eyes as deadpan
as the heads of five-nine shells;
used to cameras closing in on faces frozen,
expressionless from the shock and awe of terror;
used to tangled bodies of dead soldiers,
arms and legs and torsos jutting out
in every direction, so much driftwood dumped
by the ocean on a blasted beach; used to
Owen’s ironic dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
beating like bats trapped inside our heads.
But when we saw that photo of a single soldier,
gas-blinded eyes bandaged with a filthy rag
and mouth blown away by Verdun, sitting alone
on a cot, right then we went from thinking
we knew what war is to knowing
it’s that one young soldier with a cigarette wedged
in his nose, each nostril a beached fish’s gill opening
and closing, expanding and contracting,
smoke shape-shifting like the gas he couldn’t see.