Where Is The War?

by Tom Harding

Monday 8th March 2010 10:16 pm

Where is the war to make sense of all things?

My mother's mother was fond of saying,

“I pity you boys, with no war to fight.”

I'd recite this on dark mornings whilst traipsing

Towards the bus aside the road in mist.

Where lines of cars, shunted slowly with faces

Encased in glass like queues of roaring ghosts.

Trawling with half lit eyes through the gloaming,

The bus riders sat pink eyed and cold as carp.

What bells are ringing for these traveling dead? 

When morning comes in the alarms attack

Oh death, oh hurry boys! Lift your trouser 

And belts! The time is right, awake to work!

Now war is staged in far away places

What's left for these young men who know no hell?

But a stagnant pool freedom has created

That's saps the purpose and estranges the self.

What's been won by sixty years of silence?

But a slow, sad separation of sense-

Till the modern mind has drifted from course

And the body has deserted intent.

I recall my grandmother on frosty mornings,

Whilst passing the field where cows moon strangely

(Pounding the same ground over and over,

Retracing their worlds pathway to slaughter)

“I pity you boys with no war to fight!

Where is the war to make sense of all things?

Where is the war to tell you wrong from right?”