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Untitled
Beyond the count of years I walked the world, and
my children built their shrines to me. Decades
and centuries and millennia pass, and
still the shrines are built. Temples
insubstantial to men, clear
to my eyes. No
foundations or walls or roofs, but
shrines nonetheless. Holy
ground, consecrated… Today,
every day, somewhere in the world, the
earth is prepared for my coming. My
hallowed grounds are everywhere. In
valleys and on mountains, on
broad plains and deep in hidden passes, in
deserts, on city streets. Nameless,
unremembered places. Named,
remembered places. Forest
trails where the quiet lines of tall, clean-limbed men walked, leaving
behind them squat, hairy cave dwellers in
pools of their own blood. Grassy
plains over-marched by long rows of men with sandaled feet and
burnished helmets and spear points, falling
as chariots scythed their way through the ranks. Glens
where hollow squares of foot soldiers held spears against
the charge of armored knights and
storms of arrows found crevices between their shields. Green
ridges where thousands charged their countrymen, muskets
firing, cannon spewing grapeshot and canister, and
they cried for water, and
for their mothers, and
for the pain, and
died under bloody banners. Muddy
remnants of orchards where the machine gun fire tore
the trees to stumps three feet above the ground and
the men fell down in rows, and
the trenches where grenades and shells found them and
left them in buried piles of
limbs and torsos. Forests
where the scream of artillery shells and
the hollow thunder of tree bursts sent
foot-long splinters of wood through
the bodies of men below. Frigid
hilltops and foxholes filled with frozen bodies left
after their positions had been overrun and
the air support came too late. Jungles
where they bled and screamed and died, bodies
lying forlorn until they rotted into the rank growth under them, a
shiny bit of metal their only marker. City
streets strewn with the rubble of destroyed houses still
echoing to
the chatter of automatic weapons fire. Incinerated
landscapes where lost children weep for dead parents; lost
parents weep for dead children. The
dead with no one left to weep for them. Megiddo.
Thermopylae. Tyre. Kai-Sia. Carthage. Hastings. Stirling. Falkirk.
Culloden. Quebec. Lexington. Concord. Saratoga. Yorktown. Leipzig.
Borodino. Austerlitz. Waterloo. Manassas. Antietam. Shiloh. Vicksburg.
Gettysburg. Cold Harbor. Gallipoli. Verdun. Ypres. Nanking. Pearl
Harbor. Guadalcanal. Iwo Jima. Wake. Midway. Kasserine Pass. Caen.
Bastogne. Dresden. Leningrad. Hiroshima.
Nagasaki. Inchon.
Pusan. Chosin. Hill 800. Heartbreak Ridge. Ia Drang Valley. Khe Sahn.
Hue. Hamburger Hill. Saigon. Gaza. West Bank. Bosnia. Mogadishu. Monuments
with names of soldiers and battalions and brigades and regiments, police
actions, peace-keeping missions, conflicts, battles and wars. Cemeteries
with ranks of white crosses as far as the eye can see. A
black granite Wall with names and names and names… and
the visitors come and look down where the wall is
one, two, three inches high coming out of the earth and
there is a line of names there and
they think this isn't so much, and
as they walk the trail dips down and
the Wall appears to grow and
the lines of names are higher and higher until the
topmost line is so tall you need a
ladder to reach it, to
read it… A
monument to me. Collateral
damage… Friendly
fire… Ethnic
cleansing… Suicide
bombing… Pre-emptive
strike… Keeping
the peace… Making
the world safe… My
brothers and sisters are fading away. It
is right; it is just. Their
shrines are tumbled, forgotten. No
one brings offerings to Sun or Earth or Thought or Love. My
brother Peace died stillborn. I
remain because my children continue to consecrate the ground, in
my name, with
their own blood. I
thrive and grow. Hate
and Demagoguery, Jealousy and Selfishness have
joined my long-time outriders, Fear
and Panic. We
ride together. We
serve our father well, the Horseman who is called Death. I
am War. |
