Turning Into the Void

 

From a high vantage we watched the battle progress

 

We watched as young men ignorant of delicate flowers

 

Were torn apart by the confusion of war

 

Each man slaughtered had experienced a childhood

 

Whether idyllic or not this was of no matter

 

It was their childhood

 

Which now lay shattered in the mud of the battlefield

 

Angels hovered above these men but were afraid to venture too close

 

Afraid that they too would become contaminated

 

By the sorrows

 

By the sorrows

 

By the sorrows of the void

 

 

George Smith (1916)