In Memory of PFC R.N.

I loved when I was young the outlandish air

Of berry patches where men strayed, half-wild,

And wintered too; not that they ate or smiled

Like princes ever to my desperate stare,

Nor that the tattered coats they used to wear

Gleamed in the seams; but dreaming of kings exiled,

I watched through nights of god-fall as a child

A red spot on the mist, and longed to be there.

Rudy, your death at Salerno strains my eyes

As if I watched again for fires gone out,

And moving toward you brings me, slowly wise,

Back to blizzard-whipped and frozen hills

Where dead men round the ashes of my first doubt

Mock the wars we light to warm our wills.