The soldier laid down with the children
in a city of mosques and mortar,
he kissed one on the head for the papers,
then another to atone for the slaughter.

A writer penned her last words in dirt
beneath the swinging of a cord,
beneath the swelling of a century
and that sweet, unvisited fjord.

I heard the bar-maids circulating rumours
of their dreams and lack of time,
how men-in-suits can deliver their freedom
at the sound of a wedding chime.

There was a journalist who found peace
in the breathing spaces of war,
who left the safety of the city
and all that he had known before.

He joined the scientist in the bushes
as the baboons re-invented the wheel.
They held hands at humanity's failure,
and to a God, they learned not to kneel.

The drunkard sang into the gutter
in broken rhyme and verse,
collecting cigarette ends
in case the economy grew worse.

He was a forward-thinker
who kept in touch with his students,
and for all the lessons he'd failed to learn;
he passed them down through common sense.

The baptist laid down with the hippie
on a straw-floor in Bethlehem's heart,
they both disagreed upon the ending,
yet felt unity from the start.