The soldier can not always be fighting
There must have been a time before the fray
When the man’o war was a child running barefoot over land without mines
There must have been time for rest
Time for lunch
Time for bed
The fighting man must still dream at night, of *** and flying and the boogeyman as I do
He must have taken up his own arms
Dressed in his own clothes for the day
Let his own legs carry him eastwards
******* his own head on straight
The man inside the camouflage still combs his hair in the morning
Telephones his mother to ask about the recipe
Tries to lose the last of his gut before summer brings the beach back into popular culture
The soldier too shall die
Die victim and perpetrator and ghost of state sanctioned fury-for-a-cause
Fury-for-a-sons-life, mother dearest
Load him up! Send him off! We shall turn your boy into a man! We shall give him honour! We shall carry his body home from the field on the back of a friend!
The fighting man in his bloodlust
Turns out to be nothing more than any other son
Loaded into a gun
Shot across the field
Into the face of a history who will call him Soldier
Into the face of the mother who will call him Little One at the funeral
Who will wail and weep and tear the flag
The mother of war knows best the sting of the gun
The sting of the soldier in her arms