Images of death reveal.
The guilt you hide, but feel.
A war of shadows.
Where you once fought.
In back gardens where children play
For only peace you wished and sought.
The grass green hills of your childhood remain.
But there, there was no death sign
Wife and kids you greet at garden gate.
They don’t see your inner hate.
They don’t see your embroiled conscience,
or know the infliction you bare.
They’re only too happy to have you home.
Home to love and share.
You are a soldier home.
A soldier home from a war,
Trying your guilt to hide.
Trying to forget the child you shot, that died.
The war was someone else’s.
Why should you really care?
It only really strikes home,
when you see a child dying there.
Visions cloud your mind of voices in despair.
Why did we have to die so young?
Why did our mother’s have to mourn?
Soldier from another land, please tell us why?
The soldier’s forehead frowns.
The answer he can not give.
He was only sent there.
So other have a chance to live.
Now his war is over.
Over his home he now resides.
But the voices of despair.
Still ring in his head.
He cries to himself in silence.
How can his conscience bare.
The purgatory it must go through.
Knowing he killed a child fair.
18 July 1978