Waves of Men Thrown at Guns

 

Waves of men thrown at the guns

like water thrown on a fire;

the geography of their births

costing them their lives.

Who should “ask what you can do

for your country”?

Rock and clay recognize no borders;

sacrificing lives for a line on a map

is no service to a nation

but  makes a bonfire of its people.

Clean Technology

 

How vicious those butchers

with bloody hands!

Our deaths delivered

clean as hovering.

How wonderfully civilised!

Prayer at a soldier’s grave

Lord,

You created this young man to do Your will

wherever righteous  politicians may send him;

to loose his bullets into other young men

sent by other politicians, who, seeing the thing

otherwise, also uphold what is right.

His intelligence and strength used to cull those

most like himself, serving country.

I pray that this transubstantiation of body to stone slab

pleases You  as it has pleased those who sent him,

who have much to gain from his sacrifice.

War: Never-Ending Harvest

   

Early each morning, the river is obscured by fog;

sounds come ashore like cries from Limbo.

At dawn the young women come,

spools of brightly coloured  fabric, with fishing rods;

and, magical spiders, they cast weightless filaments

out over the water;

for a moment there are more threads hanging

than there are people on the streets of London.

The river stops;

nothing stirs; the earth turns a little.

Then suddenly a rod bobs and bends

and stares through its tiny eye into the water;

straining, tensing, till in a slick of weed,

slivered as a newt, a young man's body breaks the surface:

bulb-eyed, marble-chested and tapered

to a train of drops dripping back into the river.

Thousands upon thousands, like unlit lanterns,

or candles newly lifted from wax.

And when the fog clears

the women are standing with their t anterns.

The bank is a thousand miles long

and the river is wider than an ocean.