A Part Of God And War
A DYING SOLDIER
I read your words that do with all hope
pray,
for something better than you have today,
that is your life, or that part nearest
death,
when youth in absence tires upon old
breath.
No man shall speak his myths above my
grave,
nor my defenceless body with false words
save
for I'll not be as would his mind declare,
nor with his tarnished assumptions ever
share.
I say it now, while yet all thoughts
are mine,
tis after death I'll know where I might
dine,
and not before, as some pretend to know,
or in illusion would their own lie sow
....
For none who live can with dead soldiers
share,
a single thought, nor a single care.
2
I hasten though to comprehend what may,
be in the minds of those who for me
pray,
for it is their love which for I'd gladly
die,
thus would with this refusal friends
deny.
Ah! no matter what you and I believe,
those inner truths that by fair stealth
receive,
as loyal feelings from a special place,
do yet impart the loveliness of grace.
For we must dream and perhaps believe,
though we make merry or in fact do grieve,
That there is a place of peace where
we shall meet,
Where soldiers can their lost companions
greet.
Ah yes, it serves our veteran hearts
to think,
that when we die from life we will not
shrink.
3
Tis no soldiers choice that he advance
to die,
For in his heart tis not what's in his
eye,
He cant envisage himself a rotting corpse,
nor from his indestructible body know
divorce,
and having seen his brothers meet their
end,
he still cannot with death yet comprehend,
but retains the horror of how his brothers
died,
screaming or in silence all life denied,
and of their body parts he saw expire!
where to or from did their fine spirits
fly?
For all of what, they were had ceased
amiss,
beyond the promise of a fleeting kiss
.
Beyond imagined form in shattered waste,
where from runs all our dignity in haste.
4
If what I found in war doth clothe me still,
with what I learnt of life that I did kill,
Molesting me with it's coarseness on my skin,
denying that any compassion lives within.
Then I am perhaps not worthy of recall,
when I am gone deservedly to fall,
For what I gave my brothers was my love,
becoming absent of the one above,
clothed in the torment of my own despair,
denying those who loved me of my care.
Now that I die the guilty come to me,
saying prayers that will not set them free,
For I'll not justify their failures nor their
quest,
to claim some holy knowledge of my rest.
5
If I found God he was in blood and gore,
in soldiers clothes beside me red and roar
Who wore a helmet on his noble head,
who lay there dying with decaying dead.
God I saw in the actions of fine men,
all who in fear would do the same again,
who gave their lives for love and brotherhood,
that none in absence could have understood.
They fold the flag and hand it to my wife,
who knows my love and better knows my strife,
and while she weeps a warrior is lain to rest
a spirit glowing deep in his noble chest.
.... the bugler haunts the air with mournful
tune,
and in brave hearts a million roses bloom.
© 7/30/2003 Colin F. Jones
