Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Your World and Mine is Full of Enemies

… and the spice of foreign wars safely out of sight.
The echoes of bombardments just across the sea,
Negotiate the mean free paths of rolling downs,
And at their end meander, dying in the city streets,
Mere annoyances to those that war has immunised.

The murmurings of gunnery, barely break the dreams,
Of those knocked into each other's sleep and arms,
By drink the night before, taken in fear of death.
One breathed love into the other's ear to beat,
The jabbering of basement bars in cheap hotels,

And so they meet and stalk the sticky corridors,
Rolling hard like on the first days of sailors' leave,
Falling on the bed and breathlessly, forgetfully,
They roll and dance, considering this day their last,
And later they wake fitfully to guns and thunder,

Merging in the dusty streets and Tenements of London.
They'll call him up this day or possibly the next,
With darker lotteries, and in turn they'll press his lover,
To dull and grimy service in the new factories,
And she'll convince herself it's better than before,

A warm room at night with friends and food and circuses,
With days of tedium, the sound of war masked by lathes,
And engines falling in the arcs of shelling.
She'll make the bomb that kills him blue-on-blue,
One accident in many yet she'll never know or care.

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