Fractured Prisms

Refracted light allows us to see,
The spectrum of colors
Of self-righteousness
With certainty.

And so it is with moral conflicts,
That begins with clarity,
Belying the underside of
Destruction, pity, and
The last refuges of piety.

Since creativity, Wars of certainty
Began and ended in despoliation.
Followed by peace, and bereavement,
From generation to generation:

History records twenty-seven wars
Since seventy-hundred and seventy-six,
And twenty smaller conflicts in between.
With casualties of 3.2 million,
Most of them unforeseen.

Young men and women lost in just nine generations,
Not counting civilians caught up in the hypnotism.
Like splinters of light reflected by a terrible War prism.

The spectrum of primary colors was stained ‘dread,’
In the fourth quarter of the Eighteenth Century,
From the Revolutionary and Indian Wars,
That left forty thousand dead.

In the Nineteenth Century, the color was Vermillion,
Following the War of 1812; the Civil War; and
The Spanish-American War, we had lost
Another million.

Not to be outdone by victories attained,
The Twentieth Century color was Bloodstain.
WW I, WW II, Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf,
And twenty-six other armed conflicts,
Cost the lives of 2.2 million conscripts.

Now here we are six years later,
We are the hated not the hater.
Iraq and Afghanistan are the quid pro quo,
Twenty-Two thousand casualties,
And only ninety-four more years to go!















…inspired by reading Goldensohn, Lorrie, American War Poetry, (Columbia Press, 2006),
and Grandetita.