"Brothers will fight one another
and **** one another.
Cousins will break peace
with one another.
The world will be a hard place to live in.

"…an age of the axe, an age of the sword,
an age of storms, an age of wolves.
Shields will be cloven."

Brothers fought one another
and killed one another.
Cousins broke peace
with one another.
The world was a hard place to live in.

But this is no battlefield of
gods and men
Nor triumph over fell beast
and the splitting of shields.

This is the exploding shell
down cobbled streets of old;
of thatched roofs ablaze,  
the ashen ruin of hearth and abode;
The weeping eye of Theotokos
in Ragnarǫk’s gaze.

Two decades before;
football on Christmas morn’.
'Stille Nacht' from the trench,
that soothing tune.

Giving of gifts and handshakes
And smiles in between,
When it first dawned upon you:
You were brothers.