Once upon a childhood, when
Tulips grew in fields’ wide open, beyond the fence,
Caressing the sunshine of innocence,
Now their emaciated leaves have fallen,
And float on the winds of tumult in wars turbulence.
They smelt the silence of the eagles,
Cascading through the heat waves,
Encircling, probing the swollen caves
Hidden on a shore strewn with skulls and shingles,
And Tulips numb in shallow graves.
Soaked in red that runs,
Tulips bloom’d not, on fields they lie,
Convoys to the frontlines, on to die,
Strained to slay with blades and guns,
Horrors brew’d in the midst of the storms’ eye.
While we slumbered in the passage of night, after!
Behold, in a village ravaged… so near,
The remnants of mortal hearts trudging with fear,
On the voiceless trails, without soul, without laughter;
Their sour footprints echoed, in the carnage here.
Through the abyss of bitterness,
The children of war
Fell on our silent ears once more
Tasting - for a moment – the venom of life’s darkness.
Like ships, they drifted through the night, to knock on hell’s door.
One solitary instant perhaps, the helms of fate will revolve
Minds haunted with corpses in rot, to mild,
Into tranquil meadows, bones piled.
Until then; March on soldier! As the rage of a beast burns
Vibrant! ____ in the flesh of a little child.
Constance Georgina Khaendi Walyaro
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