The Cause
They will make a desert and call it peace. — Tacitus
This death will be glorious, says the man to his son,
This death will spill your red rich blood
And choke in the mouths of the ones I call enemy.
This death will be glorious, says the man to his son,
This death will spill your white small bones
And crack beneath the feet of the ones I call enemy.
This death will be glorious, says the man to his son,
This death will spill your young last cries
And deafen the ears of the ones I call enemy.
If my death is glorious, said the son to the man,
Will my name live on, as saint, saviour, martyr,
On the scarred tongues of the ones you call enemy?
But the man could now not respond, and said nothing to that carcass
Riddled with bullets and small and soft against the sand;
A name grown over in weeds, unsaid, unheard, unknown
And still the man crowed, as his land stood long barren
Fields ripe with abandon, flock long since slaughtered
Children, dead, martyred-
The last crow of his kind, braying that hollow song
But your death was glorious
But your death was glorious
