The field was vast and red. It surrendered, then, to heaven’s chasm of light, slender and giving. Grey with the summer’s hatred, the men are upon dirt beds. There it spills, the “sanguine,” the red liquor upon the meadow, beneath the bodies of colourful soldiers. The morrow was to come with losses of beloved lives. Their fragrance was of decay, their pale flesh being eaten up by the filth of the creeping earth, skin thinning and bodies bloating; stripped of garments and divided by the thieves, who became one with the mud. Teeth ripped away from the mouth, never to utter a word again—their blood cries out to God.

  Up to his knees, a late husband is steeped in blood and ill water. He has seen the light and seen the mist of painter’s pink, smelling of rancid corpses and their skins having become the mist itself. The husband does not walk, his bloody knees are without humour. Crawl he may not, the sod is unforgiving, and it is of the world’s faithless works.

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  The scourge of the purple field arrives to greet the husband, and he lay without will. Eyes, if not unfocused, surely were now. He became one with the sea of human carcasses, a little red soldier in the depths. He passed his death throes, and painfully so. They take treacherous treasures from his corpse, and from the stowed valour, they reap a reaper. But God laughs at them, for He knows what they do not. Eyes forever focused on the heart watch and never turn away, thus to the thieves’ dismay.

  The late husband’s body creaks, his wife safe from the sounds, but not the knowledge. She shall weep all the days she lives until merciful Lord takes her to Him, and to him her late husband, who resides in final peace. Peace from the ravaging of reason, he sits by the golden road. And from the tragedy of the mist and of the field, he can recount every day of his life.