A DYING SOLDIER

I read your words that do with all hope pray,

for something better than you have today,

that is your life, or that part nearest death,

when youth in absence tires upon old breath.

No man shall speak his myths above my grave,

nor my defenceless body with false words save

for I'll not be as would his mind declare,

nor with his tarnished assumptions ever share.

I say it now, while yet all thoughts are mine,

tis after death I'll know where I might dine,

and not before, as some pretend to know,

or in illusion would their own lie sow ....

For none who live can with dead soldiers share,

a single thought, nor a single care.

2

I hasten though, to comprehend what may

be in the minds of those who for me pray,

for it is their love for which I'd gladly die,

thus would with this refusal friends deny.

Ah! No matter what you and I believe,

those inner truths that by fair stealth receive,

as loyal feelings from a special place,

do yet impart the loveliness of grace.

For we must dream and perhaps believe,

though we make merry or in fact do grieve,

That there is a place of peace where we shall meet,

Where soldiers can their lost companions greet.

Ah yes, it serves our veteran hearts to think,

that when we die from life we will not shrink.

3

Tis no soldiers choice that he advance to die,

For in his heart tis not what's in his eye,

He can’t envisage himself a rotting corpse,

nor from his indestructible body know divorce,

and having seen his brothers meet their end,

he still cannot with death yet comprehend,

but retains the horror of how his brothers died,

screaming or in silence all life denied,

and of their body parts he saw expire!

where to or from did their fine spirits fly?

For all of what, they were had ceased amiss,

beyond the promise of a fleeting kiss .

Beyond imagined form in shattered waste,

where from runs all our dignity in haste.

4

If what I found in war doth clothe me still,

with what I learnt of life that I did kill,

Molesting me with its coarseness on my skin,

denying that any compassion lives within.

Then I am perhaps not worthy of recall,

when I am gone deservedly to fall,

For what I gave my brothers was my love,

becoming absent of the one above,

clothed in the torment of my own despair,

denying those who loved me of my care.

Now that I die the guilty come to me,

saying prayers that will not set them free,

For I'll not justify their failures nor their quest,

to claim some holy knowledge of my rest.

5

If I found God, He was in blood and gore,

in soldiers clothes beside me red and roar

Who wore a helmet on His noble head,

who lay there dying with decaying dead.

God I saw in the actions of fine men,

all who in fear would do the same again,

who gave their lives for love and brotherhood,

that none in absence could have understood.

They fold the flag and hand it to my wife,

who knows my love and better knows my strife,

and while she weeps, a warrior is laid to rest

a spirit glowing deep in his noble chest.

...the bugler haunts the air with mournful tune,

and in brave hearts, a million roses bloom.

6

The wind doth wend its way through our graves,

dispatching leaves and twigs and tiny slaves...

And shadows stretch from stout sentinel trees,

where from the ailing light now palely flees.

We sleep in silence where our bodies rot,

Cast from the world by aging or by shot

But where our spirits fly we do not know,

for yet our brothers must fight the desperate foe,

and paint the landscapes with sacrificial blood,

until in time, in time the promised good,

denies our doubts that we know true release ,

from where we wait for God's eternal peace.

for only then will we know if our bloodied sword,

was truly wielded for our gracious Lord.

© 30 July 2003 Colin F. Jones