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War
Young men love to
fight
They love to think
of fighting
Of creating enemies
to slay
Of glorious battles
And thrilling
deaths defending
An honour they have
invented to die for.
Let's fight for the
King
Who is one of us
Let's fight for
Honor
that unknown
principle
Let's fight for
Dying Well
Which is an end in
itself
And so they love to
fight until
Their DNA asks for
larger territories to seed
Until the old men
join in
With lethal
ordnance
And higher stakes
And invocations of
eternity
At first they all
join in
The men, old and
young
In battles they
call Great and Glorious
Waging war against
figments they call ideas
And it seems to go
well
And the
statisticians keep track
With counts of dead
Like sporting cards
and bookie sheets
Each battle ranked
with named battalions
The details duly
noted for the monuments
Which in a better
time would have been
Engraved lists of
teams on sporting trophies
Or personnel in
jazz ensembles
That can be
committed to memory
According to years
and tracks produced
So that later
generations of boys
If there are any
Can mimic the
battles
And perpetuate the
glory of dying in uniform
Where they do not
die alone, although they do
To keep the fight
alive
But the old men,
fearing their deaths
At the hands of
infirmity
Have upped the ante
so that the pot
Will take everyone
to that lost infinity
They make Ideals
For their
neighbour's sons to follow
Even one god sent
his son to fight
And not himself
What was once a
game and a dramatic action
With industry and
remote direction in the arena
Becomes shards of
flesh and bone
Stinking
disembowelments, a friend's jawless decapitation
A comrade's
frothing lungs,
Your own bleeding
circumcision
a mass of worms at
your loins
These wounds
unimagined by boys
Who fight in the
dry battlegrounds of imagination
Where no full metal
jacket
Does its rupturing
damage
Through the cheek
and the teeth
Where no blood
stinks with iron
And shit does not
smear the gaping wound
So that they die
like saints
In memory, Clean
and smelling of lilies perhaps
Or some other
innocent flower
With the odor of
sanctity upon them
Or let them think
so
Until the elders
grow tired of peace
And drum again.
--R A Fairbrother
January 3, 2014.
