battle array

your choice is clear these honourable scars
must in the course of things be clearly shown
but you will have to bear them all alone
and fate will dicker now in strange bazaars
what you have made the process swiftly mars
but it is sheer luck to have spared the bone
and given each a chance now to atone
while we find a new course by brighter stars
those are the options given by our hands
when we have written out the profane signs
and all the planet knows just how we fail
and yet we are held down by tighter bands
and cannot pass outside these duller lines
though large the world still it remains a gaol