We have lost the mark of time
the honour that makes of a good man
a soldier of fate;
we live as though we need not wait
as though we need not live
as though we need not fight
every moment
of a short lifetime
of sorrow and gentle tenderness
caressing the child's cheek
whilst the steel pierces his young heart
ignorant of the two-faced Goddess who claims
life
after life,
as the divine gift of consumed pyre whose ashes are swept
by foreign winds of a far away storm.