In fields due West,
we stand stiff for hours
but when the guns pop, bang, whizz
we keel to their firepower.
Twisting to the dawn,
we watch men of grey and silver
flow from hellish depths;
pour like Death's dark river
Trigger icy-
bullet burning
frantic fight-
tables turning
Life plucked. Grey, red and brown.
The colours of a dusky sky
when the sun dies
on earth's scarred, mire crown.
In the fields East,
we hear them groan.
Ghosts of heroes who yearn
for the hand that will
give them what they earned.
Heroes drunk on visions:
glorious victory,
disdaining misery,
remembered in history.
We hide in ourselves
and weep the loss.
Here sons have perished,
perished by us.
Us killers. Us thieves.
Us guilty boys,
who hide our hearts up our sleeves-
Us heroes...
In the field before me,
where my humanity died,
there grew a delicate sign.
I beheld a splatter of waving petals,
crimson as the blood,
that rusts gun metal.
The bodies of bloodied men
stow the seeds of bloodied flowers,
and when we let go our raging,
their beauty will be ours.
