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All Told
by Earl Coleman

Have you heard?

Pumped iron, gas
Copped head in two-bit balconies

Lied about his age joined up
Avid fingers yearning for a gun

Cheated of the action winding down
The Battles of a hundred Bulges won

They shipped him off to sands
Bleached white the desert of our hearts

But where's his glory, where
In guarding scaffolding, the empty land

Punching jack pine shooting tumbleweed
With rounds of pent-up rage from his Garand?

Where is the combat due him, coup to score
Where are the virgins leaping overboard

To save themselves the wailing
Mothers rivers running gore?


Did there arrive one beat of awe,
One emptiness which he had longed to fill?

And lo! the Sacramento Mountains shimmied
In the blast and skipped like joyous rams

And he was there!


The sound made powder of saguaro gouged
The thousand year old stone made glass

His eardrums shattered eyelashes fell off
His glory magnified at last

But have you heard?