Randall Jarrell — Losses

It was not dying: everybody died.

It was not dying: we had died before

In the routine crashes-and our fields

Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks,

And the rates rose, all because of us.

We died on the wrong page of the almanac,

Scattered on mountains fifty miles away;

Diving on haystacks, fighting with a friend,

We blazed up on the lines we never saw.

We died like ants or pets or foreigners.

(When we left high school nothing else had died

For us to figure we had died like.)

In our new planes, with our new crews, we bombed

The ranges by the desert or the shore,

Fired at towed targets, waited for our scores-

And turned into replacements and woke up

One morning, over England, operational.

It wasn't different: but if we died

It was not an accident but a mistake

(But an easy one for anyone to make).

We read our mail and counted up our missions-

In bombers named for girls, we burned

The cities we had learned about in school-

Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among

The people we had killed and never seen.

When we lasted long enough they gave us medals;

When we died they said, “Our casualties were low.”

They said, “Here are the maps”; we burned the cities.

It was not dying-no, not ever dying;

But the night I died I dreamed that I was dead,

And the cities said to me: “Why are you dying?