With slow, reluctant feet, and weary eyes,
And eye-lids heavy with the coming sleep,
With small breasts lifted up in stress of sighs,
She passed, as shadows pass, among the sheep;
While the earth dreamed, and only I was ware
Of that faint fragrance blown from her soft hair.
“I had never seen war, or even talked about it at length with someone who had, but I was young and knew something of violence, and so believed that war would be no more than a new experience for me, as other things… had been new experiences. War is not a new experience; it is a new world… Even its geography is new, because it is a geography in which insignificant hills and hollows are lifted to the importance of cities.”
Gene Wolfe