02/28/2026
The papers came in spring, when fields grew green,
And promised glory in a distant land.
We marched away, so young, so raw, so clean,
With mothers' tears still trembling on our hand.
They spoke of honor, duty, sacred cause,
Of freedom's light we must go forth to shield.
We fought their war, we died beneath their laws,
And harvested what bloody fields would yield.
The generals sat in comfort, far behind,
And planned our moves upon their paper charts.
We left our youth, our reason, and our mind,
In ditches filled with pieces, not with hearts.
And when the bugle called us o'er the top,
Into the fire that scythed us from the earth,
We wondered if they'd ever make them stop—
These men who traded nations for their worth.
The politician in his polished hall,
Who speaks of sacrifice with practiced grief,
Has never heard a dying comrade call,
Or clutched a friend's blood through a disbelief.
His children play where river meets the land,
Bare feet in mud, with laughter loud and free.
They do not know that on some foreign sand,
Their father's ambitions buried me.
My mother waits beside an empty chair,
My father stares at photographs alone.
My sweetheart wears the grief beneath her hair,
And speaks my name in a remembering tone.
The war goes on, though I have long been still,
A number on a list, a fading name.
The politicians climb, and always will,
While we become the substance of their game.
And by the river, where the children play,
Barefoot and careless in the afternoon,
They'll grow to read of heroes, one fine day,
And never know we died for their cocoon.
