Battlefield Cemetery
many passed by this crag today
to see where the dying soldiers lay
moaning, bleeding, crying for their mothers
perpetrators, victims and all the others
over glazed eyes malevolent with murder
stealing strangers lives like burglars
the honor, the horror, the howlers all
killing the killers, silencing stalkers
and now, the silence is deafening
sensed distant past, a hard reckoning
"'tis good", was said, "that war was hell" *
those of first-person know all too well
the pinnacle of human atrocities
yet we continue on, our selves to please
to wage, to wear it, to glorify
why we're willing, to kill and die
white marble now looms row upon row
to mark the rest of those lain low
and obelisk's and stacks of cannonballs
center places where the battles evolved
ironically we assert that we're civilized
there's a truth we stoically won't recognize
what can be changed to make this not so?
that it's we in the fields where the poppies grow #
© Goode Guy 2014-01-28
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tecumseh_Sherman
# http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Flanders_Fields
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