Rifleman

[poliphilo]

 A poem arrives- and sometimes another travels in the slipstream. This is the one that hitched a lift. We'll call it Rifleman

Rifleman

I had a swastika
On my sleeve-
Not a good look
I now believe

Also a gun
And boots to stamp
And a tower looking over
A prison camp.

The air was cold,
The food was bad,
I missed my mum
If not my dad-
At least it wasn't
Stalingrad.

But Russians came
With furry hats.
Our prisoners hunted us
Like rats-

Three of whom
Murdered me
While I looked down
From the top of a tree. 

Comments

[shewhomust]

A relation of Over the heather the wet wind blows / I've lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose...?

[poliphilo]

Certainly.

But not a conscious imitation. I wasn't thinking of Auden when I wrote it.

[cmcmck]

Since you mention it:


The gun

''I am the master of the games
That you will hardly ever play
So I will teach your sons
And if they should die
Before the evening of their span of days
Why, then they will die young.''

(Sandy Denny)


As ever the image of a man holding a gun.

A man........... No flower in this barrel.

He protecting, no doubt, 'his' women

Around and a round patriarchy goes

Where it stops, no one knows..........

AK47 in Africa's boy child's hand-

Kalashnikov built on open Afghan forge

To fuel the hates of warlord thuggery.



The patriot game in play through ages

My country, right or wrong, right or left.

Blackpowder and lead for many years

Of battle on smoke blinded furzy fields.

The desperate dead clutching hard at gutshot

Shocked faces display that final scream still.

War's weapons worsen with industrial excess

Lead to brass and this to depleted horrors.



The soldiers' creed of which death is part

Is no longer up close and personal

At push of pike or dagger's point

But death delivered distantly at bullet's tip

Did arrowstorm create such fear as this?

The wounds of war the worse for being

Wound about with witless justifications

For the shattering of skulls and spines.



What human shells are then returned?

You haven't an arm you haven't a leg

You'll need to be put on the streets to beg

But now he's got no legs at all, for he ran a race

With a cannon ball (as the ballads have it)

And still the men with the guns and ammo

Still the boys dwarfed by the weapon they wield

Still no flowers in the barrel. When will they ever learn?


''Condemn me not
For always will I play the game of war
In moonshine or in sun
And if any cross the path I choose to tread
Their chances they are poor
My name is John the Gun.''

(Sandy Denny)

(c) Marianna 2013

[poliphilo]

"War s stupid
And people are stupid"

Boy George