By Chris Brandt
This poem’s job
is to stop war. There.
Go and do it, little poem.
Now that it’s gone, dear
reader, heading for hot spots
and capitals around the world,
we can agree I’ve given the poem
an impossible job. Ridiculous.
A poem – all the world’s poems –
stop war? Which of the old men
who manage wars, will listen?
Which of the young men, dying
to be heroes, will listen? How many
among the cannon fodder, listening,
will have the courage to refuse?
We know, hardly any. Still,
go, little poem, barely audible
among the guns and bombs,
like a gnat whisper into the ears
of generals, nuzzle the napes
of secretaries of state, signal
spies, tickle security advisors,
itch at presidents and ministers,
ask them to remember maybe
the one time in their lives
they loved another human being
before they knew what side,
what other, what lines – only saw,
and heard, and loved.
Ask them to think, for once
in their lives, beyond their
profits and their penises,
to the dear heart of life.
Call all the other poems,
have them come as bees,
one for each bonnet, to remind
them that their last war failed
in all but puny ways, that
even for the winners there are
losses no victory can hide,
that no conqueror, great war
waged, parading victorious
beneath monuments to his triumph,
thereafter ever lasted long,
that no act of war in all
our long and bloody past,
has ever led to peace.
Ask them, little poem,
if they know
what peace is.
