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Sep 23
“I see no difference between war and ordinary ******” Albert Einstein

From the moon our planet looks unified
Quite dapper in its veil of blue
Pirouetting gracefully about the sun.

Lost in a dream, I see myself as a child –
Innocent in my lawn chair
On the Sea of Tranquility - telescope in hand.

The screen door pounds against its frame
And Father hands me a lemonade
And sinks into the chair beside me.
This is the day HE must tell me.

I start to say how peaceful and kind it all is.
And that I want to go there someday.

Father stops and me, takes a deep breath and begins:
Two thousand years ago I sent
My firstborn there to clean up a terrible mess.

Proud men slashed their neighbors
And stole their goods,
Neither children nor women were spared the sword.
In the end, they hung him on a cross."

I said, “you must be mistaken;
All I can see from here is serenity.
This can’t be: they are all your children.”

Father continued, “It is worse now:
Even prouder and crueler men and women too
Use my name to justify their barbarism.
Children are even killed in schools.
They have made bombs strong enough
To destroy an entire city -
All over boundaries that I neither drew nor intended.”

My head sinks into my hands
And I began to sob uncontrollably.

As I dream on, my wails carry all the way
down to earth where all the children weep with me
LOUDER AND LOUDER AND LOUDER!!

Their mothers run to their sides.
Their fathers smash their AK - 47s
And H bombs against the rocks –
Vowing to relinquish fratricide forever!

I awake with a jolt only to find myself
Back in the nightmare
That the proud refuse to banish.
Robert C Howard
Written by
Robert C Howard  Estes Park CO
(Estes Park CO)   
126
 
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