Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Sergeant Jonathan Mathews of The Highlanders killed in Afghanistan
Read this
Can we think
a thousand times before we kill
the other in the name of power
or land or ideology?
And after we have thought a thousand times,
written down the reasons,
met with friends to test our cause,
renewed the guns and missiles,
cleaned off the button;
when we have stored up food and water
for a siege, sent the children
to a safer place,
shored up bunkers in backyards,
built new ones near the mint,
thought of hero as someone
convulsed and martyred in the mud,
committed maps to memory,
studied up on ciphers, invented
a new history of disease
and buried the family jewels
to foil the looters;
once we have tolled the bells
and prayed our guttural prayers
for the spirit to be named for us;
sent factories into overtime to make the braids
and uniforms, the medals
to decorate the ones who can return,
confused shelling peas with houses,
small kingdoms crushed;
after we check procedures
for the treatment of fallout
from that most unnatural cloud,
and persuaded our young
that it is just to fight this way,
an adventure, safe, no hand to hand;
when we have done these things
and more, could we think
a thousand times again?
Jorie Manefield Ryan
