Michael Cope
Old men like us must always talk of war,
Whether we fought and won, or didn’t fight
Or fought and lost. Whatever went before
Must be told again, so that the sight
Of fifty burly men in uniform
Eyes front, lock-stepped, left, right, left, right, left, right,
Allows young men, like we were once, to see
Only an organized stupidity.
You tell us how, when food was gone, instead
You ate the cats and dogs, then starved away;
And how they beat that young man in the head
With rifle butts, in the hot sun, where he lay
Bleeding, for half a loaf of dried-out bread –
Whereafter he was stupid till the day
He died – and how it was their cruelty
To let him live, for everyone to see.
I’ll give you in return my uncle’s trudge
Through Poland in the winter, years ago –
How any comrade who was weak, or judged
A problem, was knocked down into the snow
And shot at once, and how he bore his grudge
Against all Germans till his death, although
He understood the general fallacy,
And knew the foe was ideology.
Fifty earnest military men
In boots and camo, corporal beside,
Squared up and marching in five ranks by ten.
Who will tell them of the ones that died
For the fat and lying rich, tell the children
To look away, that war is suicide,
If we old men are not at liberty
To tend the horror in our memory?
Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 6 September 2022