The sea at evening moves across the sand.

Under a reddening sky I watch the freedom of a band

Of soldiers who belong to me. Stripped bare

For bathing in the sea, they shout and run in the warm air;

Their flesh worn by the trade of war, revives

And my mind towards the meaning of it strives.

All’s pathos now. The body that was gross,

Rank, ravenous, disgusting in the act or in repose,

All fever, filth and sweat, its bestial strength

And bestial decay, by pain and labour grows at length

Fragile and luminous. ‘Poor bare forked animal,’

Conscious of his desires and needs and flesh that rise and fall,

Stands in the soft air, tasting after toil

The sweetness of his nakedness: letting the sea-waves coil

Their frothy tongues about his feet, forgets

His hatred of the war, its terrible pressure that begets

A machinery of death and slavery,

Each being a slave and making slaves of others: finds that he

Remembers his old freedom in a game

Mocking himself, and comically mimics fear and shame.

He plays with death and animality;

And reading in the shadows of his pallid flesh, I see

The idea of Michelangelo’s cartoon

Of soldiers bathing, breaking off before they were half done

At some sortie of the enemy, an episode

Of the Pisan wars with Florence. I remember how he showed

Their muscular limbs that clamber from the water,

And heads that turn across the shoulder, eager for the slaughter,

Forgetful of their bodies that are bare,

And hot to buckle on and use the weapons lying there.