When the fighting forces had finished
sorting out the politicians' mess
and the leaders of the vanquished
had lined up to excuse, not confess;
When the leaders of the victorious,
that same entrenched ruling class
who by their acquisitive incompetence
had brought this conflict to pass,
meet at the conference table,
expense claims to hand,
with little thought for the future
carved up the loser's land.
When they all set to with
an avarice and greed
and little or no thought for
a defeated people's need
to create the conditions,
provide the bitter cause
for the next lot of leaders,
to follow their own wars.
When the dead had been buried
under once contested ground
and memorials raised for those
whose remains were not found,
when the wounded and the damaged
were just callously filed away,
an ever present ready resource
for the politicians next armed play
was God back in his heaven.l
did the people all know
no promised land for heroes
just a return to the status quo.
Were the poets and the wordsmiths.
those who'd survived the trenches hell
the only ones with the compassion
and the understanding to tell
of the horror and futility,
the absolute frustration and despair
the mind numbing existence
from just having been there.
Just twenty years later the peace
that ended the War to End All War
led to that explosion that set
the world to back conflict once more.
As the politicians' peace of vengeance
slowly and thoroughly unravelled,
with fighting forces mobilised, the path
into to war was once again travelled,
did the poets and the wordsmiths
sadly put aside paper and pen
and wearlly tread that sorry path
into conflict once again.
