Blood & Light in the War Zone
(Stories from the shadows)
They say there was no blood on the street
though the bomb killed thirty-four
because the deaths were in a building
hence the pavements were left pristine.
.
There was rubble spread out as valleys and mounds,
the child running behind his ma stopped a while
he’d never seen his street with such places to hide,
when the mortar hit him - and hid him from sight.
.
The dirt-encrusted tanks rumbled in single file,
the first driver, fatigued, suddenly braked,
as he saw a man kneeling, his hands out to stop the tank,
the driver looked down and wept, so did the man.
.
In the park, she sat with her little girl,
glass bottles in hand, cheese graters, polystyrene,
motor oil, sharp nails as shrapnel -
she erased her girl’s innocence, one Molotov at a time.
.
And a father held his daughter close,
the other side of the barbed wire,
“Go, go” he urged her to safety,
and turned back lonely into a land deeply scarred.
.
And the heavens quietly watched
every man damaging this bordered land,
every gift ever given now exhausted,
only ashes and tears falling on the now-holy ground.
Hear me recite the poem!
Chesterton said “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
What do we gain from war? The answers are all to do with geopolitics, belief, commerce or fear. What do we lose from war? The answers are so many that they are lost in the multitude of count.
In these lands, which were bequeathed to us as borderless and boundless stretches, men first came and claimed ownership. They then built barriers to differentiate and dissuade encroachment. And in one stroke, all kinds of barriers got established. And everybody was ready to defend or expand.
And war was enacted on the foundation of fear, of losing hegemony, of showing a perverse machismo, for power, for commerce. Man was ready to die in the firepit of battle, than be seen as weak for trying to save the earth from its scorching end. Man's massive ego rises and dies on the edge of its limitless foolishness.
As Eisenhower once said “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”
And the stories of heroism and tragedy never end. May it be Syria, Palestine, Iran, or Ukraine.
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What evocative words.. as ever brilliant..