Kit Kelen #1186 - what the war did to me so long before I was

1186

what the war did to me so long before I was

or

circumstance of flight

a swatch of light

call colour of the past

say what you don't know

won't hurt you

I don't know to name it

in those eyes

whose

though we be the biblical umpteenth

and I'm a kind of cutup

here's confronting justice

so much best never mentioned

all another world was gone

that's how we are here

it wasn't fate but hate

had them from me –

those whom I never met

still with us in our skins today

paint the thing over

as many seasons as days

as other skins

in other wars

worlds away as well

in a language I never knew

and won't have time to learn

heard them in my childhood

crazy dreams to be, to live

only a ghost comes this far

lore lost

and love

and all those objects meaning

to another fire

same sun

a trickery of reasons

hall of trophies

the ancestral loss

come through the wall and breathe

now all the agonies are mine

neither felt not saw

but eyes in which

my love was learned

all the past welled there

and the hand wound world runs down

still flickers

I take refuge in a song all out of tune

this is the past we're not to know

what did the war – so long before us –

what did the war take from you?

the war to which our weapons go –

what will it take from them?