The Horrors of War
 

We've had several threads on poems by others dealing with the horrors of war. I suspect many of us have written our own. Here are a few to start it off.

The Journalist

The when came first, and was no problem since
clocks hung on the market wall had stopped
precisely at the time he had to know,
and there were watches too, all smashed it seemed,
and parts of straps, and down the blackened street
a grand old tower timepiece still retained
an hour hand; and what was good was that
they all agreed: there was no fog or mystery.

Where was simple also, since the maps
and GPS coordinates all showed this village
or that town, and most had names, or he could
find someone to tell him this is The-Street-
of-Music-Stores-That-Used-To-Be or here is
The Place-of-Orange-Trees-That-Burned-All-Night.
He would write it down slowly, in his way,
and soon began to find the names himself.

He often stumbled, though, at what, for what
was not so clear. Some kind of IED,
they’d say, perhaps behind a truck or car.
Men came with masks and guns and called out names.
The belt is wrapped around a piece of corpse.
A woman, all in black, in line for food.
He learned more acronyms, and all the vast
new nuances that came with improvised.

And next was who, and who turned out to be
impossible. The bloodstains on stone walls
were who, and headless bodies found in lakes,
and gunners torched inside their vehicles,
and chunks of flesh and fat; and still the questions
rang of who was this and who did that,
and who was shot or bombed beyond all moral
sense, and who was God to suffer this?

And when he came to why he took a walk
at noon, behind a berm of blasted earth,
and stripped off forty pounds of Kevlar vest
and shirtless, spinning, spinning in the sun,
leaned against a rock, and puked, and wept;
but still the sun remained, and still he went
on going out each day to sanctify
the old, old cry: who, what, when, where, why?



Toy Soldiers

The little tin men in their little tin hats
bang their loud little drums for the blood they won't shed;
and the ones who don’t fight lead the rat-a-tat-tats
when the little tin men in their little tin hats
fill the air with their calls like a clatter of cats —
until nothing is left but the rats and the dead,
and the little tin men with their little tin hats,
and their loud little drums, and the blood that's been shed.

Hi Michael,

I think I prefer your second poem here, which I like a fair bit. It seems to me easier to write a short war poem than a long one, pace Homer. Here is I think my only war poem, posted here some months ago.

Cheers,
John


Border


A tree will move but will not walk away.
It speaks and maybe the wind hears it. I
have seen a tree turn in the wind, about
the time of day the sun is up and all
you see is trees. This is a place I might
well shed a tear. Yes, I am on the level.

There’s trouble at the border. It’s a thing
the trees don’t really care about. Along
that dotted line, men are exchanging shots.
Some are on horseback, some in a mass grave.
They call out in the cool air and the notes
they make this morning seem as if alive.

 

Three contributions (posted earlier) to the anti-war discussion.

Seeds of War

Their seeds ripped off by comrade Stalin
a century ago now fall on
the Ukrainians' soil—their essence
steel. We know
that's not to feed them:
it’s to starve, to kill, to steal their freedom.
Let Putin's orcs reap what they sow.

Note: Stalin’s adopted surname means steel. Ukrainians call the invaders orcs, after brutal humanoid monsters created by Tolkien.


Myrmidons

After and with Thoreau

Ants battled on my Walden woodpile,
Small reds against much larger blacks.
The wood was strewn with dying and dead:
Imperialist blacks and republican reds.

A red clamped on a black ant’s chest
Was shaken till a back leg broke.
I watched another red assault
The black ant’s back and gnaw his neck—

An Achilles avenging his Patroclus?
The black destroyed all the reds’ limbs,
Lopped off their heads and left with them.
Who won this internecine bellum?

Most warrior Myrmidons soon dead,
Ant squads claimed corpses, black and red.


Note: This is meant to be a microcosm of Thoreau’s discussion in Walden, Chapter 12: “Brute Neighbors.”

First appeared in New Verse News; later in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily


The Word War

Remembering Wilfred Owen’s
Dulce Et Decorum Est

He wrote in verse about this word
on a blank page as pale as death.
Though silent, it is mindfully heard.
He wrote in verse a word of the absurd
sweet lie: pro patria mori earns a reward
of decorous honors for one’s last breath.
He wrote in verse about this word
on a pale page—on repetitive death.

First appeared in New Verse News

The Old Lie

What would Owen have written, had he lived?
It seems presumptuous to speculate.
Had he returned home whole to those he loved
would he have foundered, inarticulate
without the special stimulus of war?
Would he have flown a Spitfire next time round
or turned Dunkerque into "A Beach Too Far",
scabbing it over neatly, like a wound?
And what would he have made of "Shock and Awe" -
the great cacophony of graceless might
that mocked the things we said we did it for?
Another day ends in another night.
Why should I try to find his voice again?
They wouldn't listen now. They didn't then.


This, of course, was Iraq. I was a member of a Quaker group called Welsh Writers Against the War. We wrote, we marched and we demonstrated, and we achieved sod all.

Thunder

Great casks hung in the atmosphere—
***too near!—
so black, they looked like enmity
***to me,
then burst, and tore my ears asunder,
***their thunder
like rocks that rammed the earth and stunned her.
Across the sea, as far from sight
as Neptune, battlefields ignite—
too near to me, their thunder!


Battle

We heard the bugle’s strident warison
and charged the enemy. Across the mire
the horses hurtled. Caught in musket fire,
a flock of starlings winged away. Who won?
We? The enemy? The birds? Outrun
our fate? Absurd! No one could re-inspire,
could ever prevail upon me to attire
myself in fighting coats. The Fates have spun
their web. My friends are gone. We had a choice:
turn tail or mount our ponies and then rise
in spirit like fierce falcons. The clarion’s voice,
our quickened pulse, sharp gun smoke in the air,
we galloped as they galloped. None would spare
the other, ant-like, yet far more unwise.

(The above is a bouts-rimés.)

Still working on this one. The title is a placeholder.

Slaughter

What you see are the remains:
the woodland, the smoke, the retreating flames.
Somewhere, perhaps, in a far-away country
the sky is bluer and roses cling to a stone wall,
palm trees lull a mild wind.
Here there is nothing.
Here there is nothing but snow on the branches of the spruce.
Here there is nothing to kiss with warm lips.
Here lips grow cold with time.
You claim, my child, your heart is brave,
and living without hope is worse than death.
What do you expect of death?
Should we love instead these long sick hours of life,
these narrow years of yearning,
the brief blooming of a desert rise?

Letter of Complaint to World War Two

In my life I have loved two women
and you knew them both before I did:
seduced one and tried to kill the other.

Sachiko adored you.
Her father a Tokyo mafioso, a gang boss, a yakuza;
you must have been proud of him, he
followed that Rising Sun
that big old blood red meatball
through Mongolia and Singapore, later
ran military construction in Taiwan.
Your air raids were wonderful.
Everybody fussed over her in the shelters;
she always had extra toys.
One of my father’s aides
took me to the hospital every day,
to sing for the wounded soldiers.
I jumped from bed to bed
until they clapped and cheered.
I'm sure they hated me!
When you were over.
the family was repatriated to Kyushu,
an area you had savaged.
No homes, barely any food.
One day a new girl came to school
in a bright yellow dress
carrying a shiny tin lunch box stuffed with
freshly made rice balls,
American candy.
Those other kids
beat the shit out of me
and the teacher helped.
Tore my dress apart, smeared
mud and dirt all over me.
Took my lunch.
Called my father a criminal.
Now she is Spike.
Lives alone in Manhattan,
paints large canvases,
will not talk to other Japanese:
but still speaks of you fondly.

Marta was born on the Baltic Sea
In a house on a beach
behind a strip of pines,
in front of a birch forest;
descended from the
Northern warrior women.
Do you remember?
You shot at her in 1939, asshole,
on the way to Saxony,
and again three years later
crossing a river below Munich,
helping her parents push a hand cart
through Europe.
Her father spoke six languages,
ran a DP camp, forged the papers
that took them here.
Marta learned unaccented English within one year,
willfully disremembering Latvian and German.
We were born one week apart.
I remember you perfectly,
every victory, every scrap metal drive.
She will not recall your face
except when pictures of refugees and wagons
fleeing Saigon
Kosovo
Somalia
Darfur
Syria
flash on a screen without warning.
But we are here and you are not.
We have outlived you,
my warrior woman and I,
my fierce pagan love.

(This appeared in my most recent book, Furusato.)

I wrote this poem for my brother sixteen years ago after he volunteered to take part in a relief convoy from South Africa to Zimbabwe.
He had fought in a futile and misguided war there and wanted to give something back to the people who had once been his enemy. He reconciled with them, but is now crippled by PTSD, anxiety and bipolar disorder, a casualty of the futility of war like millions of others and many of our friends who died needlessly.


A RETURN VISIT TO MOUNT DARWIN

Is that the baobab which shaded him
thirty five years ago as he prised
landmines and booby traps from lethal lairs
knowing that every second could be his last.

Is that a descendant of the baboon
who mocked him, an unbeliever, as he
crossed himself ironically back then
and took the go away bird literally

staying away from the land of his birth.
Until now, a bible not an F.N.
to protect him: a weapon to convert
people whose parents and grandparents
once wanted him dead.

Later that night, lying on his back
gazing at a dazzling sky, convinced
of the existence of a caring God,
he feels at home again thanking
his training for allowing him eternal life.

In the dishevelled cemetery nearby
a comrade’s bones are chewed by ants
as they have been for centuries.

The baobab’s deformed arms tickle tinkling stars
bohowing baboons breed boisterously
and platoons of ants march in time to the cemetery.

Published by the late Les Murray in Quadrant Magazine in Australia in @008.

should read 2008. Apologies

Snatched from the Farm: Three Sisters

1.
One line consists of elderly and ill;
the other young and fit and working age,
who’ll get a bowl of drugged soup as their wage
and even get the hang of a new skill.
Two sisters in the “healthy” line now see
their sibling standing in the other row—
the sibling with the eczema. They know
that something doesn’t look right here. The three
must walk or die together. They’ve no choice.
The youngest sprints across the yard to pull
the “sick” one back. The trains will soon be full,
and when they stop, nobody will rejoice.
They’re off together rolling down the track,
three teens whose parents never will be back.

2.
As fodder for the factories, they trekked
barefoot across the snow fields. Hunks of bread
were all that kept their reed-like frames erect.
One bitter morning, just beneath their tread,
they noticed spuds and scooped them up. Those raw
tubers they’d conceal and eat at night,
aware their persecutors had a law
prohibiting these girls from such delight.
In camp that evening, lined up in the quad,
the sisters, close amid the others, shook
as one in ten were murdered by the squad.
When the girl beside them dropped, they didn’t look,
but knew they had been spared. The following dawn
they held each other as they plodded on.

3.
They walked and slept, but didn’t die together.
The Russians came and then the sisters set
their sights on Palestine, where each one met
a man, had kids, and then the crucial tether
that lasted through the horror snapped when two
stayed put and saw the youngest move away.
She watched her children blossom day by day
in a land of hope or, leastwise, somewhere new.
She and her family once owned a farm
in Bratislava. Now she’s in a place
where caregivers abound. The human race
will kill or comfort, dish out food or harm.
She dreams now, not of trials and ordeals,
but of the cows, the chickens, and the fields.

(Appeared in Poetry Super Highway, won a poetry contest, and appeared in my book, “Celestial Euphony.”)

I recall this moving meditation by Richard Eberhart that he read at UCLA during the Vietnam war:

The Fury of Aerial Bombardment

You would think the fury of aerial bombardment
Would rouse God to relent; the infinite spaces
Are still silent. He looks on shock-pried faces.
History, even, does not know what is meant.

You would feel that after so many centuries
God would give man to repent; yet he can kill
As Cain could, but with multitudinous will,
No farther advanced than in his ancient furies

Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity?
Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all?
Is the eternal truth man's fighting soul
Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?

Of Van Wettering I speak, and Averill,
Names on a list, whose faces I do not recall
But they are gone to early death, who late in school
Distinguished the belt feed lever from the belt holding pawl.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidax...582d4 0fd7b28

Here's one of mine:

Big Picture

"She lived, you know." I'm speechless when I hear it.
Not at the news itself (which isn't new
to me––I watched a Kim Phúc interview
years ago) but at the lack of spirit
with which you toss this tidbit off. It's clear it
doesn't seem miraculous to you.
Considering the hellfire she went through,
I'm awed by her survival. I revere it.
But you're a cynic, free of such excesses.
So when I cite a few atrocities
that science has enabled, your blasé
"She lived, you know" apparently dismisses
napalm from my catalog of these.
You're unimpressed. I don't know what to say.


And here's one of Rose Kelleher's. Don't miss the author's note.
https://www.rattle.com/enlightenment-by-rose-kelleher/

Another I can't forget:

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

Randall Jarrell

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

War Is Kind [excerpt]
Stephen Crane - 1871-1900

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

      Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment
      Little souls who thirst for fight,
      These men were born to drill and die
      The unexplained glory flies above them
      Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom--
      A field where a thousand corpses lie.

Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

      Swift, blazing flag of the regiment
      Eagle with crest of red and gold,
      These men were born to drill and die
      Point for them the virtue of slaughter
      Make plain to them the excellence of killing
      And a field where a thousand corpses lie.

Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

Horrors of war
 

I don't have a horrors poem of my own, but my favorite is Alec Waugh's "Cannon Fodder", which I highly recommend. It's a little long to copy, but these are the last 3 verses, as he addresses the folks back home who "have not seen what death has made of him."

You have not seen the proud limbs mangled and broken,
The face of the lover sightless, raw and red.
You have not seen the flock of vermin swarming
Over the newly dead.

Slowly he'll rot in the place where no man dare go.
Silently over the night the stench of his carcase will flow.
Proudly the worms will be banqueting.
This you can never know.

He will live in your dreams forever as last you saw him,
Proud-eyed and clean, a man whom shame never knew.
Laughing, erect, with the strength of the wind in his manhood.
O broken-hearted mother, I envy you.

On a Corner of a Pixel

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. —Carl Sagan

I’ve a hunch the president (ex-prime minister),
whom the planet now thinks is at least as sinister
as The Joker, had never read “A Pale
Blue Dot” If he had, he couldn’t fail
to see himself in Sagan’s text,
his bureaucratic muscles flexed,
swooping raptorially on
his neighbor. What’s new? (Carl would yawn.)
Aiming to flatten, bomb, destroy,
cause havoc gives him serious joy:
the momentary master of
a fraction of a dot. What love
he has for his fellows across the border!—
soon to zap them in short order.
Both young and old will gather, fight
and trounce the tyrant, as the light
of a trillion suns bombards the night.

August, 1965

The smallest and youngest came first
We could hear them before we could see them
A kilometer down from the grandstand
Out of sight past a rise in the road

We could hear them before we could see them
A kingdom of crickets was chirping
Out of sight past a rise in the road
The children were marching and chanting

A kingdom of crickets was chirping
We still could not quite understand them
The children were marching and chanting
We waited, like crows on a fence

We still could not quite understand them
The twentieth year since the sun burst
We waited, like crows on a fence
The marchers now almost upon us

The twentieth year since the sun burst
They have emptied the country of children
The marchers now almost upon us
Holding pennants and banners and chanting

They have emptied the country of children
Fifty thousand here marching this morning
Holding pennants and banners and chanting
“No more Hiroshima, no more…”

Fifty thousand here marching this morning
Through twisted and savaged gray concrete
“No more Hiroshima, no more…”
“No more Nagasaki, no more…”

Through twisted and savaged gray concrete
A kilometer down from the grandstand
“No more Nagasaki, no more…”
The smallest and youngest came first.


From Furusato. By pure coincidence I was in Hiroshima on the twentieth anniversary, and this is what I experienced.

Fully understood.

Childhood recall:

Wars Hot and Cold

I watch my father’s mustache twitch.
He winces at Life’s photographs
of Yalta, grinning Joseph Stalin
darkly evil. Dad’s head nods no.

It’s ’45, the world’s relieved,
but Dad thinks Russia is and will be
our nation’s greatest enemy.
At church, we pray they’ll be converted.

We practice ducking under desks
at school, in fear of war with Russia—
George Orwell guesses we might perish
from bombs like those that won the war.

Too Much Sky (July 1944)

That was the day when there was too much sky.
Nobody came to get her out of bed
and when she went by herself to the window
yesterday’s everything had disappeared.

Everybody was busy and shouting
and when at last the feet came on the stairs
something inside insisted she should run
across the room and jump back into bed.

Someone came in and sat down quietly
and said the little boy across the road
wouldn’t be coming over for a while.
He and his Mum had had to go away.

He wanted her, they said, to have Blue Bear
to keep for him. But Blue Bear had got wet
although it wasn’t raining and he smelt
of the fireplace first thing in the morning.

Alone again, she went back to the window.
How odd of Raymond, when he went away,
to take his house with him but leave Blue Bear.
She didn’t like that there was too much sky.

Antwerp, 1961

There was a time when mornings were defined
by bicycles, and sturdy girls who rode them
to their office jobs through cold, damp, still dark
Flanders winter mornings: full of laughter,
as they lingered in the downstairs hall;
sweater sleeves pulled down to fingertips,
bare, unshaven legs chapped flaming red.

A time to pass the shell-pocked fronts of houses,
and see, and yet not see; look past the scars,
wash blood from clotted blood, put stone on stone,
restore the earth, rebuild and resurrect,
and do not ask whose blood, what earth, which God,
but hope that something had been learned in blood.
There was this time, one time, and then it passed.


Two Love Stories

Her Princeton MFA, his partnership.
A turquoise choker with a silver clasp,
two Breuer chairs, an aunt’s pied-a-terre,
a Baskin woodblock print. An opening
at Sotheby’s, a brightly patterned vest,
a small tattoo, the scent of cloves, cocaine.
A nose once mangled in a rugby match.
The Parthenon, Antarctica, Beijing.

Her denim wedding skirt, his Zuni blood,
a way of always laughing after sex.
Two spotted dogs, a uniform, a cat
that jumps on stranger’s laps, some paperbacks.
A chance to leave the pueblo far behind.
A neatly folded flag, a body bag.

This is by Cavafy as translated by Stratis Haviaras. The setting is about 175 BC. The Greek original is in Haviaras’ book, Cavafy, The Canon. I recommend it. It’s ecphrastic in a very important sense.

Craftsman of Wine Krateres

On this wine krater fashioned from purest silver—
custom-made for the house of Herakleides,
where taste of the highest order reigns supreme—
regard the delicate flowers, the streams, the thyme,
within which I’ve set a lovely young man,
sensual and naked, a leg yet dangling in the water.
O memory, I implored, guide well my efforts
as I render this young face I loved as it once was.
The undertaking, as it turned out, was difficult, in that
nearly fifteen years had passed since the day
he died, a soldier fallen in the defeat at Magnesia.

Did you mean to post this on the new Art Poetry and Image thread?

No. I put it here because of the death of the soldier at the end. Although the specific people and bowl are imaginary, the conflict and defeat are not. There are actual bowls as incredible as this imagined one. Perhaps I can locate a photo link to one. It’s a masterpiece of art that constructs a convincing ache at war’s useless destruction. If the lamented individual had been a young non-combatant woman, the narrator’s sorrow would have required a different last line, perhaps her being captured and sold off. I know that it might seem a stretch to put it here, but the narrator still feels the powerful individual loss.

Τεχνουργός κρατήρων

Εις τον κρατήρα αυτόν xx από αγνόν ασήμι —
που για του Ηρακλείδη xx έγινε την οικία,
ένθα καλαισθησία xx πολλή επικρατεί —
ιδού άνθη κομψά, xx και ρύακες, και θύμοι,
κ’ έθεσα εν τω μέσω xx έναν ωραίον νέον,
γυμνόν, ερωτικόν· xx μες στο νερό την κνήμη
την μια του έχει ακόμη.— xx Ικέτευσα, ω μνήμη,
να σ’ εύρω βοηθόν xx αρίστην, για να κάμω
του νέου που αγαπούσα xx το πρόσωπον ως ήταν.
Μεγάλη η δυσκολία xx απέβη επειδή
ως δέκα πέντε χρόνια xx πέρασαν απ’ την μέρα
που έπεσε, στρατιώτης, xx στης Μαγνησίας την ήτταν.

https://brewminate.com/wp-content/up...Rome-Roman.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/474x/e0/92/ec/e...eum-a-bowl.jpg

These illustrate what Cavafy was imagining. Neither is precise. I have not located right now my own photo of a Roman silver head whose features could be distinct enough for the poem, though Cavafy’s description of the body and pool are lacking.

An old poem of mine I found in my files:

I Didn’t See the Parade

I didn’t see the parade this morning, no;
what I saw were blooms that glow in the sun and grow.
I didn’t hear loud trumpet, cymbal, drum;
from songs of birds, with light I was overcome.
I didn’t feel the gravity of the day;
I felt the warmth that launches June from May.
I heard the wind, like flutes, sough through the trees
and knew that war will never silence these.

The Heart of Hell

A theater where thousands shelter
as in a tomb—they swelter
dreaming of water and food,
falling as infants squall.
A maternity hospital—
falling, they can’t elude
the missiles and bombs which batter
peaceful towns, vibrant cities, a nation.
Apartments in high-rises shatter.
They fear annihilation.
They flee by the millions. An age
has begun. And who can gauge
whether this is the final stage
of humankind or the birth
of a more harmonious Earth?

It wasn't until it was recently published that I remembered the poem I posted earlier had been revised.

Slaughter

What you see are the remains:

the woodland, the smoke, the retreating flames.

Somewhere, perhaps, in a far-away country

the sky is bluer and roses cling to a stone wall,

palm trees lull a milder wind.

Here there is nothing.

Here there is nothing but snow on the branches of the spruce.

Here there is nothing to kiss with warm lips.

Here lips grow cold with time.

And you claim, my child, your heart is brave.

Does it ever end?

Blood and Sand

Do kids in sand
dream
of a deadly rocket
in each raised hand?

Do kids in sand
dream
of a ribboned pocket,
from their homeland?

Do kids in sand
dream
of a clever docket
for a slaughter planned,

and then to mock it,
the bloody sand?

Auden 84 years ago had the words, which still match the horrors of today.
.....
I and the public know
What all school children learn
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
.....

Ralph, what is your poem doing in Drills and Amusements? Previously workshopped or published? I might have missed it over here, but I’m glad I didn’t. Very fine and so sadly apt.

... In fact, it reminds me of a poem called “Bosnia Song.” I don’t care for a lot of the verse that Brodsky, a wizard in Russian, wrote in English, but these opening stanzas have stayed with me:

As you sip your brand of scotch,
crush a roach, or scratch your crotch,
as your hand adjusts your tie,
people die.

In the towns with funny names,
hit by bullets, caught in flames,
by and large not knowing why,
people die.

In small places you don’t know
of, yet big for having no
chance to scream or say goodbye,
people die.

Carl,

Thanks for the high five! I wrote it yesterday, so it wasn't workshopped and isn't published.

And thanks for the "Bosnia Song," new to me.

.

Tit For Tat and All That

If it wasn’t so tragic it might be funny —Maybe Monty Python


Tit for tat for tit for tat for tit for tat
for tit for tat for tit for tat and all that.

Yes eyes for eyes, yes teeth for teeth.
No never turn the other cheek.

(Find me the forbidden lovers under the covers,
entwined together, possessing what others seek.)

The eyeless cannot see.
The toothless cannot speak.

Some hold tongues, others wag fingers
at the venomous who bleed hatred

upon the young who are learning
the ancient unrest, ungodly, unsung.

.
.
.

.

Who Begets Who

Who
put a gun to the head of the one
with a gun to the head of the one
with a gun to the head of the one
with a gun to the head of the one
without a gun?
Who?
One by one
each pulls the trigger
until it is done.



.

This probably doesn't fit the rubric, but it's all I have and I wanted to play. A poem for kids that treats the "horrors" very, very slant, if at all. (Ralph, I agree with Carl. Yours is very good).



ARMY ANTS

How can there be army ants?
... They're simply too minute.
Though ants can march, I'm pretty sure
... they cannot wear a boot.
They cannot stand up on two legs
... and solemnly salute.
And I have never seen a gun
... so small an ant could shoot.

Rog,

Thoreau would approve of your amusing reductio ad absurdum satire of horrible humanity’s ant-like marches into battle.

Lost Boy

Not long after your picture had been filed
the press began to circulate another.
Your brief appearance as “drowned Syrian child”
was superseded by your little brother.

The media reviewed the human damage
and Don McCullin with his Magnum eye
explained why Aylan’s was the single image
your tragedy will be remembered by.

You were too clearly dead; he seemed asleep.
He was the Twitter “Ooh”, the Facebook “Aww”.
His was the picture that they chose to keep;
an easy icon for a distant war.

Your likeness now is difficult to find.
Not quite so cute, and yet a lot more true,
uncomfortable, best put out of mind.
This poem, Ghalib Kurdi, is for you.

Ann, that's absolutely wonderful. Wow.

I didn't know the incident involves so I did a Google and am now filled in. FYI, his aunt says that her nephew's name was Alan, not Aylan as the press widely reported.

Ann,

A lovely tribute to one and so many others lost.