Oh, how do you do, young soldier of space?
 Do you mind if I rest for a while in this place?
 May I stop by your grave 'neath the red double sun?
 I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
 I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
 When you joined the brave fallen in Thirty-Sixteen.
 I hope you died well, and I hope you died clean.
 Or, young soldier of space, was it slow and obscene?
 
     Did they beat the drum slowly? Did they play the pipes lowly?
     Did they sound out the Dead March as they lowered you down?
     Did they shout "Shai Dorsai!" so proudly?
     Did the band play "The Green Hills of Harmony"?
 
 Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?
 In some faithful heart, is your memory enshrined?
 Although you died back in Thirty-Sixteen;
 In that faithful heart, are you forever nineteen?
 Or are you a stranger, without even a name,
 Enclosed there forever within a glass plane;
 In an old holograph with its colors all drained.
 No color, no memory, no sorrow remains.
 
 The stars; how they shine; in the black gulf of space.
 The quasars, like eyes in a great shining face,
 Glow peacefully out through the nebulous clouds.
 No blasters. No torpedoes. No guns firing now.
 But here on this planet, it's still "No Man's Land".
 A name that they used, on the first World of Man,
 For a place where the blood was spilled in the sand;
 Of whole generations that were butchered and damned.
 
 Young soldier of space, I can't help wonder why
 All that lie here; now why did they die?
 And did you believe, when you entered the Corps;
 Did you really believe that war could end wars?
 The sorrow. The suffering. The glory. The pain.
 The killing. The dying. It was all done in vain.
 For the soldier of space it's all happened again,
 And again, and again, and again, and again.