Bullets from Bones

“Indifference, Year of Peril, 1944” by Thomas Hart Benton

 

we are that species

who numbers cadavers

more wardead than

died-in-their-sleep

since antiquity more

bloody years rent with

combat or suffering

siege than at peace

knowing war begets

war we make beautiful

bullets from bones

to recycle their valor

reconstitute sacrifice

crumbled in graves

of both soldiers and

citizens lost in the

billows of battle-fog

all of which pale against

whole populations

entire generations

erased by the wickedly

punishing sword

flame or slavemaker’s

brandiron victory often

takes into its hands

asserting its dubious

rights of immoral

barbaric revenge

oh the genocides

staining each century

back through prehistory

utter depravity

strangling humanity

with our pretensions

to power that mock

the theology vested

in principled ethics of

jus bellum iustum

we know the right

thing yet continue

continue continue

to do what we know

to be wrong leaving

open for all our black

bloodied millennia

questions of whether

or not our apparent

intractable flaws

are perfectible

 

 

 

From my books Bullets from Bones and Legacies (vol. 1)