Wagram, 1809

I marched for peace, but boots and hooves were on my roads,
lit my horizons, a million bayonets uplifted, cockades,
flags, nodding the one lure, elite battalions
in step, swarmed into the same vortex, the same elation.
It was mere energy - yet the drumbeat thrilled my thought,
while somewhere behind me, at the window or edge of wood,
morose, theatrical, the one they called The Word,
who was already The Process, trained his spyglass out
across the tumbled farms to where the dead, spectral
and lovely in the silver frosts of Austria, still
tendered him their mute acclaim…
        mere energy. No dream
stood angel to those towns. The ancient gait and drum
dispelled my boredom. And now I watch. My fancy moves
joyful, murderous, amid these orders, boots and hooves.