Late-Night Wonderings about Germans and Pilots

More or less German,
Of Prussian extraction
Like the night of an Equinox
The starry distraction
All the same as it was
The themes running thru'
Winter and everything
Relating to you

My midnight-eyed soldier
The French at the gates
The Marxists, the Allies,
Decrypting to Fate
But the truth of the battle
Lies hand in hand
To make each Contingent
Part to each man

Relating each action
To troops in the Line
That type of imagery
Coming to mind
Schools of thought rising
And plans of attack
You stood in the Dark-Yard
And hid from the flak

In a New Age where
Armies stray off from Nations
And Prussia is past now
Just illustration
You flew like a Baron back
To an Old World ideal
The flash of faint starlight
Momentarily real.

Why does the world change
And Empires die?
The cloth-covered biplanes
Trailing the sky
You were almost an Angel
With a pilot's intent
To the fields far below you
Where the soldiers lay, dead.