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"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?
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