No, the pen is not mightier than the sword

Though it is true the words it spills do not rust

So easily as a blade in the grip of a tomb

Of fading marble, its lost hero’s husk

Mostly forgotten like boxed photos would

Be, or a field blooming with broken tanks 

Dyed by rain to the color of old blood-

Mere centuries will reduce this steel, ranked

At the moment the shells hit, to tussocks

In what will someday be an arid steppe long abandoned

By even farmers, who will have moved them like rocks

Off to one side to plow while they could,

Then departed themselves, as all will do,

As my words, written while passing through.