We took back a village today.

Not much going on:

A few broken windows,

A burned-out car or two,

A corpse,

And one poor sap of a teenage soldier,

Hands on his head, crying out for Mum and Dad.

 

A broken old man emerges,

Shaking his fist and shouting ‘Kill them all.’

Another sits thoughtfully by the stream,

Praying for a missing child.

 

Our flag, mounted on a captured tank,

Flaps, in its own kind of triumph,

Lazily, against the wind.