Armistice Day - A Remembrance (for Dad)

How can I explain the terror,

Or the pounding that shook the world,

The disorientation

The smallness of me?

I can only say

“The War! The War!”

I can't describe the numbing, the brokenness

Huddled in my trench

Awaiting the barrage of artillery

Creeping across the blasted emptiness

That separated the enemy and I,

I can only cry:

“The War! The War!”

I can't make sense of the propaganda

In suspicious tone and accent

Blaring out across the plain

Ransacking my certainty

And filling me with doubt of my rightness

In my cause

And wondering at my own sanity

As I simply whisper:

“The War! The War!”

I can't bear the loss

Of all my comrades

Who fell beside me

In the trench, or

Defected or

Were granted leave or

Sent to another posting,

As I cowered in the familiar muck,

Driven mad by the rats and fleas

In doubt and shame

The starvation of loneliness

The vacuum of touch

And the Cholera of despair

A seemingly endless sentry duty in

“The War! The War!”

I dread the shame of reporting

The failures after failures

Of my tactics and campaigns,

As I lost ground,

Fled, broke, or lashed out at some

Phantom enemy position,

Going over the top, wildly

Desperately dashing

Vulnerable across open land

Toward strength and entrenchment

Looking the fool for my incompetence

In battle in

”The War! The War!”

I can't bear the anguish, as

I see the faces of those who stayed behind and

Made lives and loves and grew into this world.

Who found connection and meaning and joy and peace

while I lost so many years in an arena which

Taught me to speak a language they do not understand,

Far away in

“The War! The War!”

So I talk of tyrants and butchers,

Majors, Generals, and combat assaults,

Creeping barrages, Enfilades,

Triage, misery of cold and

Imminent death and disfigurement.

The devastation of divisions lost, routs,

Disease, discomfort, and powerlessness,

Scars, madness, and amputations,

Annihilation of squads, platoons, companies,

Battalions,

A terror so powerful every cell exploding

In a different direction with each falling shell,

As they speak of the same time --

Of the same place --

In a different language, and

With different emotion and call it

“Family, childhood, playing, growing, learning,

School, first dates, jobs, houses, lovers, children, and

Optimism of the future, while I can only

Mutter dumbly:

“The War! The War!”

And now comes the dawn,

Comes the early-born, rosy-fingered dawn,

And now a strange silence,

The last echoes of

Bombs fading in the

Crisp new morning

Bouncing a diminishing

Repetition around me

“It's Over! It's Over!

The War! The War!”