Wars Never End

The frightening acrid stench of mustard gas
has almost dissipated from Granddad's foggy mind
You are one of the few old men who remain
of those who struggled stupidly for King and Country
through the boot-sucking mud of the Great War
Now passing one hundred years it is difficult
to discern if those images are real or only in your mind
images of grey-clad Huns with gas masked-faces
like one-eyed monsters bright bayonets held high
coming for you through the mustard mists in France
or those loud sudden sounds that make you jump
indiscriminate heavy shells tearing the very sacred earth
where yesterday evening you buried your closest friend
a friend of too few short years buried there without
time for tears before the next raid across no mans land
Now you sit and rock waiting for the lieutenant's
last shrieking whistle that will end your war

Father why did you make that tragic journey
back to Holland to march in blazer blue
with ribbons proud again through the streets
where once you fought from door to door
beating back and back the enemy who had torn
Europe asunder yet one more time
Even though your tired medicated heart
had to strain to move your proud marching feet
in tune to the same wailing pipes that led you ashore
dodging bullets from invisible machine guns and pistols
or did you hear the heroic cries of man killing man
as young Canadian men spilling blood too often
their own bravely charged again up foreign shores
Did you believe that this body-tiring trip
would erase those images or did you hope
to reinforce the reason for your being


The sticky smell of fast-rotting human flesh
of spilled guts exposed to stifling jungle heat
the muddy thump of mortars creeping nearer nearer
to our hidden listening post where Jim and I
wait for Charlie our faces painted green
and black like obscene players on a comic stage
directed by remote puppeteers in a struggle
that grows more senseless day by day
Is it the recurring effect of the drugs we tried
in vain attempts to quell the mental nausea
replaying those scenes in my mind at night
that causes me to scream and soak in sweat
will I ever forget those night horrors

And now my son tells me again and again
as if he where an old man who cannot
remember that he has already repeated
and repeated the guilty story of bombing and
strafing fleeing Iraqis as they retreated
carrying Kuwaiti loot across the oil-fired sands
and yet I know he feels some close-knit
comradery with other pilots who roared
into the dangerous dark Arabian nights
filled with SAMs and exploding AA shells
images that will for many more years
haunt the young men like him

War does not end by treaty or annihilation
it is as vivid as yesterday in the mind
of the victor or the vanquished
war does not end until
the last soldier
dies