There was a little boy
once, crouched nervous
on the stairs, in the house with no heating,
his heart black and bare.
It’s the end of eternity;
He’s lost his daddy.

On the battlefields, bleak
with fanfares, furious
flag-wielding in shrieks of despair
and soldiers shedding
their selves,
their blood
for what? -
for War.

Oblivious, with Reality
relayed through a television prism,
the tragedies managed
the carnage rewritten.

And she too is shivering. Her mother
holding her, holding her,
telling her
she loves her
with the radio background
spouting
everything’s fine

but her daddy’s gone:

Blasted
by a mine.

Far away in time
in landscapes
unearthly, where gravity,
where sense, where shadows are defied;
there, only at night
in the stillness, the soft music,
the echoes of children’s cries
make a contrapuntal chorus
amidst the blunt gunshots,
the loss of good lives.

The memory,
the victory,
the double-edged knife.