Glory

How do you keep it bottled up inside?
This is a battle where your passion is
the bride and death is glory; to say it’s
but a game and no-one ever dies just
isn’t true. I die for every combatant
who tried to win and failed. They lie
in battlefields where death derides a
muted mortal end. The strident cries
in wasted fields are calls for heroes to
arise from corpses warm. You shade
your eyes and claim it isn’t so. See, I
say, shadows of the beaten men all
march in line again to form a battle
square. They’ll join in combat fair to
trade their lives for your sham glory.
©15 March 2008, I. D. Carswell