Jennifer Strauss, 'Epitaphs For Casualties'

[duathir]

Cross-post from war_poetry:

Epitaphs for Casualties

I

Here lies the Unknown Soldier
But somebody knew him once,
Cried louder than the big brass band
Steeling his steps to paths of glory.
Waited beyond hope
Until the troop trains stopped
Returning,
The last POWs
Straggled back;
Waited beyond despair,
Lying always on her side of a bed
Half empty.

II

Here lies a woman
Tended her garden,
Kept a clean house,
Was warm in bed,
Cherished her children.
In air-raid ruin
The house came tumbling down
About her bursting ears.
The flowers in her garden
Bloomed momentarily in flame
Before they died,
But for her children
It was a somewhat slower process.

III

Here lies an unknown child
(For who should know him,
Parents being dead
And village razed?)
He died for liberation...
Although as yet
He could not speak the word,
The guns on either side
Shouting in raking crossfire
Stitched it through his flesh.

IV

Here lies a man
Was kind to dogs
Went regularly to church
And seldom quarrelled with his wife.
It hardly proved an adequate defence
Against the witness of the camp,
The scrupulous records of extermination
Working, please you, "under orders".
He never understood
Why there should be defence
For getting rid of vermin,
It seemed so much the natural thing to do
For any simple decent lover of dogs.

V

Here lies a man
Of sedulous political consideration
And tender conscience.
While he was pondering
Tactics and motivation,
Some of the causes scrutinised expired,
Showing thereby a culpable transience
From which, he found,
He could not be exempt indefinitely.

VI

Here lies a man of action
Who learnt too late
Concerning consequences
And could not live with them.

VII

Here lie dust and ashes:
If you should wish to breathe
Do not disturb them much.

by Jennifer Strauss