Elfriede Mollon

There Was A War

Bedraggled casualties strugglewalking,

Limping, breathweary,

Home from the war –

But war got there first

In a preposterous irony of betrayal –

Repudiating eyes mirroring rewards of destruction,

Landscaped by a ruthless death;

Home and war united inextricably

Without distinctive lines –

No start, no end.

Crouch, soldier,

On your scrap of has-been edifice

Where images of loved ones

Hover above your sobbing,

As your comrades march on

(More crawling than marching),

Dismembered bodies and fragmented spirits,

Unreassemblable,

Towards their own scrap of has-been edifice.

There was a war,

And it came home.