Argent banners fly o’er
Battlements strong and high.
Chatoyant silk garbs the noble ladies and
Damask their chivalrous lords.
Enthralled are they,
Fraught with their own fetid grandeur,
Giving no thought

to the woes of the morrow.
Hailing the festive night,

they forget the bloody dawn.
In the morning they shall weep,

these fairest of all damsels,
Just now realizing that their handsome knights

shall surely die.
Kissed a fond farewell, they
Linger in this stone cold keep,
Marinading in their own fear and sorrow.
Nothing can halt

the inexorable march of war.
On distant fields shall young men die,
Paladins of a hopeless cause,
Questioning not their sacred duty:

to kill and to be killed,
Rending souls, even as they do flesh.
Stalwart warriors indeed,

to endure this bloody combat.
Tiffany flesh torn by Damascus steel
Until the battle ends, and they,

stumbling, return to their ladies.
Verily, though, they shall forget the blood

and the gore and the never ending scream
When again the call to arms

rings forth across the land.
Xiphias gladius of this, humanity’s sea.
Yet, for a single night

they are content in their revelry, the
Zephyr of Mars still far beneath

the eastern horizon.