Veterans of the Seventies

His army jacket bore the white rectangle 
of one who has torn off his name.  He sat mute 
at the round table where the trip-wire veterans 
ate breakfast.  They were foxhole buddies 
who went stateside without leaving the war. 
They had the look of men who held their breath 
and now their tongues.  What is to say
beyond that said by the fathers who bent lower 
and lower as the war went on, spines curving 
toward the ground on which sons sat sandbagged 
with ammo belts enough to make fine lace 
of enemy flesh and blood.  Now these who survived, 
who got back in cargo planes emptied at the front,
lived hiddenly in the woods behind fence wires 
strung through tin cans.  Better an alarm 
than the constant nightmare of something moving 
on its belly to make your skin crawl 
with the sensory memory of foxhole living.