Guns pound on...

Was taking a break today from study...and chanced upon a site of the Great War and found one of my favourite war poems - "In Flanders Fields" (I've put it up in the previous post). As I browsed the site...the sickening feeling in my gut of child-soldiers being sent to the front-line as ill equiped cannon fodder, and the atrocities of war in an environment which would parallel the freezing, wet depths of the Devil's bathroom were utterly mind-numbing and thought-provoking. It just reminded me about the Middle-Eastern Crisis...and how the mad grasp for resources has led to an uncontrollable reciprocal killing of Allied and Iraqi citizens. Perhaps, like Churchill said so ironically in the context of the Americans joining the War then...they should have just "minded her own business and stayed out of the World War".

On another note, I've begun work on a new poem (quite a new one to my collection since my last)...so here's the draft...

"Guns Pound On"

Guns pound on, banging out
their merciless tum-tum,
Demanding to be heard,
By ears which have long fallen deaf to their cries.

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I watched you cry, as you picked yourself up,
From the fall in the green grass of the garden,
Knees soiled and skinned,
A tear edging its way to the brim.
But fought back...

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You were sixteen.
All full of promise, and had the world to see.
And so much more.
Gardens to conquer, and flowers for the picking.
Roses, daisies, tulips, lilacs.
But you choose the daffodils, springing from the dormant bulb.
I asked why - and you answered, in a matter-of-fact way:
"It blooms most radiantly, don't you think, Mother?"

And I nodded silently, and smiled.

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