Descent

Father, Father, what have I become?

See me now for what I am

My trembling hands and tattered clothes

Of graying grays and dusty medals

Gleaming once with twilight’s blaze

But now like chains and iron scraps.

My boots are frayed and hardly hold

The numbing pain of Russian cold

Summer times are summer dreams

--now we wake to cold and war,

To ice and cold and war.

---

Father, Father, my pride forgotten

From flag to rag to bind my wounds

That is what my country wants

To die in this forsaken world

Of shadows and the flaming corpse

Of cities shattered, hollowed, hallowed

Prayer smothered in the smoke

No words to grapple with our hope

No mouth to speak our native tongue

For into beastly groans and savage cries

We’ve descended, animals! as we were.

---

Father, Father, once you said

Kill to live, don’t live to kill.

Yet, I wonder if you knew

What foolish thoughts those words construed…

I kill to live, to bury sorrow

My weeping gun spills metal tears

To wash my feet, my heart, my ears

My thirsty knife drinks sickly water

And pines for noble Rhineland veins

The blue-blood rivers of my youth

Hidden till my darkest hours.

---

Father, Father, how wrong you were

To think that God would keep us safe

When all we’ve done is steal His grace

And He our dignity, our face.

Beasts! I’ve killed, I’ve killed, I’ve killed!

And so I shall, and so I will

Till my very last I’ll kill

I’ll live to kill

I’ll-