Statistics

Napoleon shifted,
 Restless in the old sarcophagus
 And murmured to a watchguard:
 “Who goes there?”
 “Twenty-one million men,
 Soldiers, armies, guns,
 Twenty-one million
 Afoot, horseback,
 In the air,
 Under the sea.”
 And Napoleon turned to his sleep:
 “It is not my world answering;
 It is some dreamer who knows not
 The world I marched in
 From Calais to Moscow.”
 And he slept on
 In the old sarcophagus
 While the aëroplanes
 Droned their motors
 Between Napoleon’s mausoleum
 And the cool night stars.

Published in Chicago Poems

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