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[This poem took its inspiration from a sonnet by Charles Hamilton Sorley, When you See Millions… The sonnet was in a collection of writing about World War One.] 

Of war I read
The poems, the pain, the countless dead
And when you see the millions…
The millions thrown together in common grave
Of what were battle lines
And now are places paved
With bones and blood and interwoven human flesh
Their lives they gave, it makes me wonder why
All men they flocked together, came to fight and die
Though I wonder even more at how we live
Our dreams, our aims, the things we choose to give
And when you see the millions…
The millions thrown together in common streets
Not soldiers now, as citizens they meet
But in each other sense the foe or spy
Protect the private castles, avert the eyes
From foreign gaze or so as not to see
The other kind of me, one old or poor or not all there
Or just a neighbour’s sad or jealous stare
Of their own accord our hearts and hands
Lay borders, demarcate the lands
And build the trenches, place the guns
The lines of city fences, few the crossing points
Fewer still the truces called, the white flag raised
For emergencies perhaps, for holidays
When we stop being islands, become the sea
Unstitch the private space and melt into the ‘we’
But otherwise, the lonely shadows flitting by
For one or two a tear we could cry
Extend an outstretched hand and warming word
Not snatched away unheard in city rush
That sometimes brings to mind the people crush
Like in the soldiers’ tales, piles of corpses in the way
Just trampled underfoot in war’s indifferent haste
That dulls the finer feelings, steals the taste
Of fellow human beings and fate we share
These streets and skies and yellowed, dirtied air
Amidst the millions lose our individual face
Become the masses, fashion our new place
As atolls, reefs, and endless rocks
No shore we leave for building docks
No room in concrete towers grown tall
The weaving all machine-done now
And we, we raise the walls.
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