Paying For Lies With Lives

"Sing to me, Muse, of the wrath of Achilles." - Iliad, Line 1 Western dreams were born in wrath, Overmastering all the noble aims of reason. The bloom of youth, cut from its proper path, Fallen wasted in full season Torn and silent upon fields of fire, Betrayed by elder men's desire To force their goals on one another, Stolen from each grieving Mother Against the tides of pain each strives His misery to quench, his hate to smother As they pay for lies with lives. Home and hearth abandoned for ambition, The promise of tomorrow dies on foreign shores For shadows' sake they are cast to perdition, To drown in the shifting seas of wars. The Enemy as confused as they, Affrighted and divided by the fray, Consumed by fear in the battle's heat The dead lie dead, come victory or defeat. The living, stung by memories' knives, Against which they in vain entreat, Go on to pay for lies with lives. The world turns on as the game is played, Each dawn finds men so much the same. The debts accrue, are bourne and paid Each seeking honor for his name, And a home secure in peace. Yet men move other men, and will not cease To bind them to some formless claim or cause, To bid them die to right the flaws Perceived in others of like kind; their wives Bide in fear and live by tyrants' laws As they pay for lies with lives. Noctambulate, the pawns of powers fight, For cause of country weakly understood; They move from day to death's eternal night Directed by the wills of men of wood. When all has ended, what has been acheived? What meaning comforts myriads bereived? The world will turn, and others rise To fill the void, the numb surprise Of lives unlived, of weeping eyes, Of silence heavy with unanswered sighs For those who paid for lies with lives. Must so many lines of history Be so far writ in blood, So tainted with tragic mystery Trammeled by iron stained with mud, Its pages overrun with acts untamed, Acts of slaughter by the vast unnamed? So many deeds set down in red Give cause to rest uneasy in our beds. Though the past recedes, the present shall reprise The accusatory march of the silent dead, Parading those who paid for lies with lives. Who dares leave our collective guilt unclaimed? Were not our many wars for subtle reasons framed By minds fit for much finer uses, By hearts that might have scorned such abuses Leading to this madness - who denies Those self-delusions that should leave us shamed, That make us pay for lies with lives?