'How come you're not in the army?'
Demands the mother whose only son, suffering a malady
Was exempted for debility.
'Why aren't you at the front?'
Asks the little girl who has no older brother,
And no living father.
'What are you doing at home?'
Questions the old man who served just one
Trip in East Asia in eighteen hundred and seventy-one.
'I'd enlist for Kitchener's,'
Boasts the fifteen-year-old, having a lark
With his friends, and playing football down at the park.
'I would, but I've to look after my family,'
Argues the husband who spends his prime
Toiling away in the mine.
And as the young man, moving crates on the dockyard,
Hides and adjusts his prosthesis (to scornful regard),
The Lord, and the Earl, and the Duke,
All demand that the youth
Take up arms in their obsolete teams,
To destroy each other's dreams.
YOU ARE READING
On Patriotism
PoetryA collection of poems questioning ideas of loyalty and nationality on our rainy little island that once ruled the world.
