1919
- You’re forbidden to put it into words
- so you put it into guns.
- When a democracy killed a million of its own
- it didn’t seem absurd
- to kill another’s democracy
- by splitting its tongue.
- Who attacked first in defence of that democracy
- becomes a mere intellectual exercise
- when the thief is already in the house.
- He brought bloody footsteps from the trenches
- and the fires he set are still to be doused.
- But he still thinks he’s right on all accounts
- with a confidence that wrenches.
Wilson John Haire. 10th February, 2019.