primal contentment
like a burly elegant pirate
behind an English mustache and gritty eye patch,
Sir Adrian could summon little
from The Book, abandoned in rubble,
of Common Prayer to parry
why he fought,
why overlooking, one-eyed,
at downtown London in Nazi shambles,
steeping a dirty World War II tea bag
on a broken veranda
smoldering, Carton de Wiart
self-knowing it was that he was there
—England there—
instead of another empire
—always rising or falling—
convinced that there is never a time
to not fire an always weapon
into the always someone
always asking for it
— S. Hays, “commendations for the soldier Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart: dis-civilization and its contentments”