The Keening

The Keening Disconsolate depressions on the valley floor of green With bodies bent and keening, young girls and their kind Take to the dead fields down, to fall upon their knees Scattered, sickly tombstones, laid flat on mud and grass Hearts broken on the sorrow, nothing more War leaves desolation in a lingering stench of death Surroundings void of life but drenched in blood Despair is in the futures of the mourning maidens After the fight a second conflict brews, the eerie wailing Malignant, so many hard tears flood in trembling streams Down, already in the valley, to join the others In rattling fear the young girls touch each cheek Of their men, their loved ones, cold and dead Grotesquely somber faces sink to morbid depths As reality sets in, not on their side A formidable enemy, despair is clearly there The living reminded forever of the cost of life Crushed, consumed in hellatious fear that never ends Their loved ones will never love again Slaughtered, butchered, wasted on the ground They sink with deep nausea, ugly as the blackened rocks about Perverted on the landscape, the dead stay in their place No more warmth of life to fill their needs The women weep in competition with the rain in torment Old ladies place coarse blankets on the raw dead men Too much pain fills their fragile grieving veins They sing the keening song to praise their dead Keening continues on the wind and in the rain It will never stop, never end, always the same Disconsolate depressions on the valley floor of green Wailing with great agony and screams Entered -12/05/14 Poetry Contest Name - Death Shadow Sponsored by Justin Bordner