The Voice Under the Flowers

It's not the dying, but the killing, that gets tiring
Lifetime after lifetime, with no taste for my enemy's blood.
Death is the easy road, but once taken permits no other.
My lot is to save my kindness for my brothers who take lives too.

It's always wrong to kill, but I always find new reasons.
The battalions will adapt, like unwelcome flowers, but their role
Is always singular, to deserve their death with a fatal mistake.
At the end of this, I have only cold words to record their names.

Damn them all — they've kept me from love long enough.
The mulch of their bodies grows flowers for lovers to share
But the soldiers who sliced open the belly
So the children of the nation can feast would never dare.

I turn my back, for them I can only feel contempt,
For the cities they build, that all just will crumble,
It's the least they can do, to atone for the soldiers
stupid or gutless enough to get killed.

They've left me to dress in white in their memory,
To flourish cheap medallions in the place of grief.
I can't even mourn myself. Make a public garden
For one who never lived, in hopes that he might.

Don't remember me — there's little for you there:
An old name from your clan, a sense you possess this land...
You will not see yourself in me, until you learn
That God won't throw dice with lives, but people do.