A Private thought


The longest war was finally over
The killing field could at last take a rest
The air to silence and ground to clover
Went where no trooper stayed behind to see
How the green grass grew back tall on the crest
Where a spear had pinned a man to a tree

From the hand of a strong man it had flown
As a cannon ball split open the earth
Into an infinite pit men were blown
Towards the oblivion like massacred ants
While his eminence on a gilded girth
Brushed the dust from the red stripe of his pants

Looking up to consult again the mind's map
This commander of pawns and armoured knights
Had to choose what to keep and what to scrap
From the imagined scene of great victory
Musing on the concern for human rights
Before a piercing pain finished the story

Hell unleashed all its dragons setting fire
To the ideals of glory and honour
Left as tangled shadows on the barbed wire
Where best laid plans of mice and men ended
As the ashes smoulderd with their candour
And fortune punished the powers pretended

A Private thought returning on a train
To his home about all that he had seen
Things that came and went and washed in the rain
Like the heavy brown clothes he never changed
Wishing that the world was not quite so mean
And his broken body somehow rearranged

Lucignano, 15 11 2006