What They Saw (Part 2)

What they saw, that day ruled by nightmare understanding, The carrion legacy of remorseless lunacy, Of man’s inhumanity to man, The day when realisation gored the civilised world Telling that mankind had transcended the primordial depths of savagery, Travelled beyond the abhorrent degradation of the mere bestial, Had screamed feral hatred in the face of creation, Had proclaimed – “Behold what we can do!” They approached on creepy soles, slowly advancing, At first refused to acknowledge, To submit to the awful, awesome cataclysm of truth. In their exploration, such vile treasures they unearthed, And in so doing exhumed some partial salvation, For with this revealed visitation of atrocity upon atrocity, Not one man’s heart could remain whole, unbroken, And at some stage, not one man failed to bow his head and weep. What they saw, at the point of history collapsing, A scathing fable skewing the triumph of good over evil, And as the hardened combatants brought blankets And chocolate and comfort to the ghost prisoners, And they hugged their bones close like brothers would, Their tears dripped gently to the quicklime soil, sinking in puffs of smoke. In a world that would never be the same again Somewhere else the birds were singing.