[…]
Through the long school of day, absent in heart,
Distant in every thought but self we tread,
Wheeling in blocks like large expensive toys
That never understand except through fun.
You can read the whole poem on the Poetry Foundation website
1Shapiro described this as a ‘savage antipatriotic poem’; but although the poem suggests that the army’s training program did not invariably produce the desired results – a perfectly trained soldier – only an already prejudiced reader would be likely to read it as ‘antipatriotic.’ … Shapiro evidently meant he was writing a poem that did not clearly support the methods and goals of the United States Army, that did not suggest the training program would produce highly motivated soldiers who would defeat enemy forces in defense of the democratic ideals of their country.1 [David K. Vaughan: Words to Measure a War: Nine American Poets of World War II, McFarland, 2009]