we boys
had some friends,
boys who had no father,
fathers the war had shot down
the bullet in my mother's purse
was brought home from war
and was no longer lodged in my father's lung
he was seventeen and already among the dead,
patriotic madness poisened families for all time
and all was lost thrice
in two wars,
in-between two wars
and when my father met us boys
he was alive as if he was still seventeen