Armistice Day

 

It’s a hell of a way from yesterday

And all behind is burning;

We frog-march on to invisible dawn

From whence there is no turning.

Each human heart is blown apart

Six ways before September;

The whores of chance damn backward glance

And delicate lads dismember.

There was a war, there is a war, there ever a war will be;

The bloody track leads back from where they nailed God to a tree.

Love a thing, and watch it die,

And only death’s forever.

In wave-swept graves, in parts we lie,

And death, too, is surrender. 

There was a war, there is a war, there ever a war will be;

Who was that raving charlatan we hanged on Calvary?

There’s no escape from sorrow, boys,

Between here and high heaven;

Just pray for once the guns may pause

On the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, as bells toll eleven.

-- Stephen Kent Roney