I am young
Yet I know nothing of life.
Why do they never tell us,
Until it’s too late?
In the faces of children, the crude old men lied.
We came to realize - with bitterness -
That poor devils like us are no longer young men.
In school they did not teach us that what we are to see would change us.
That you cannot go on after seeing the bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades.
But that is not what really changed us.
It’s the eyes.
The fear swimming in pools as you run him through with your rusted bayonet.
The visions of his mother, a flickering cinema seconds before you gun him down alongside his comrades.
I fear what he sees in me is a monster.
Yet again, I mechanically move on to the next set.
Forgive me comrade, for I have lost any desire to conquer the world.