WAR
What is this thing called war?
So close, familiar,
Intimate and mine?
As near as the lines on my palm
Insistent, “you know me….!
“I’m in you, like wine….”
A heady draught, an incessant drum.
Like a pulse, or a song
That doesn’t end.
What are you, that abides,
In the blood, and the bone
That calls out,
Is compelled, bound outward,
and in, bound to see
Its image flower in the dust
Spilled like petals
Carmine blooms, from a basket overfull
Of good intentions?
What is the ancient intelligence
That dwells underneath
Every protest of peace
And goodwill, the limbic brain
Calling forth, from the deep
Well of memory, and fear
In sibilant earnest, the desire,
“To end all wars,” if you’ll just let me have
This, one more….
How is this thing
To ever end, its constant beat
Its tired song, when all its life
Is cycle-bound, like any hungry
Parasite, whose craving need
Is ever-fed, and hunger is
Its own reward, a thirsting addict
Reaching out its blind, poor mouth
Among our kind?
So give it alms?
And throw a bone,
Or millions, and some crumbs besides?
The climax of the clamoring beat,
The drumming pulse, the blood’s own heat
Insists and calls, from hill to hill
Like ancient fires, and women’s cries
That armies on the boil
Deny.
The serpent logic stirs
And wakes, but fails to rise
Beyond the gnarled, grim root
But coils and measures, calculates
The strict advantage, less flight than strike
“The kingdom’s yours, don’t hesitate
“Dominion waits,” the blithe,
New leaves, far higher up, are a’shiver
The cold wind turning ‘round.
The seed, the core
Of war, set deep
In sex and difference, older earth
Primary, raw, polluted bane
Of Other, Mother, Monster, Law
Dark matrix, unalienable
Nature’s saw. “What made you can unmake you..,”
Whispers fear, the throne now threatened
Balanced, pure.
Yvonne Owens
Victoria,2014
Men carry an injured young victim, after air strikes in Douma, eastern al-Ghouta, near Damascus. (photo: Bassam Khabieh/Reuters)
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