What grows from the wars we wage?
Fields of poppies grew before, blood red and swaying
brittle and fragile on hundred year old breezes;
Untimely sands and ocean depths,
cascaded and consumed
grave, unknown memorials.
Freedoms (for a time and within set parameters) and declarations
of self-congratulatory self-determined self-serving enlightenment,
echoing from screeching printing press to dazzled 24 hour studio,
from retina to fingertip,
as we struggle to turn away
or sit in nuanced judgement.
Pride and patriotic passion
for nationhood so nearly stolen
and so prized as they teetered on one of many brinks.
But in the shadow of growth,
finding the time and character to grow themselves,
come lucrative, smiling prospectors.
Their perpetual fears echo forcibly
to an accompaniment of glittering silver laughter,
calling on a desperate need for a stand
and to cover land in fiery rain
purchased at no extra cost of course,
oh, other than lives lost, or worse.
Whisper that line.
For bags of beloved bones soaked in the dust of history
are missed so dearly and proudly.
The humble that lay down atop justness and truthful valour
pass as teardrops, trickling on to sacrificial symbols,
achingly confused, at once grey in their youthful pallor.
So what grows, from these war we wage?
The wrong as right, and the right as wrong;
the moans of those lost, resonant in the throats of ancestors;
salted water, salted earth
and a faltering doubt, as a world falls to its knees and cries:
Never again! Oh why, forever again.
Book of Pye 