Oswald Le Winter

The white and blue bars in the square
on the above the biceps of your sand
colored tunics symbolized a tradition
in whose aura you were asked to strive.

“Give all you have to give to free a people”
you had never seen before, whose dialects
were sing-song to your corn-fed ears,
those who led you there asked of you.

And so you followed death into the dessert
to return draped in flags, and the Liberty
for which you blew your final breaths
is still only body parts in body bags.

Now you are home, alive under sod
and a plain stone, a memory with pain
for those who did not go but who believed
the daily hype, not worth a dog's old bone.

And they that govern our troubled nation
wear faces, firmly brave, feign patriotic fervor
as they implore those still alive to serve and die.
Sad, sad nation! The wrong men are in the grave.

A TIDE OF HONORS

Each medal shames me that I
accepted, once, with price,
chest stiff as a marble oak
as cross, stars, and heart swam
towards me, motionless before
a troop formation rigid on parade.

What did it matter that these honors
swam upon a bloody tide.
I had studied death’s diction,
‘collateral damage,’ ‘body count’
all necessary to advance the goals
of murder without questioning

why turning lives into abstractions
and numbers is the only way
to free an alien race. Dying,
my leaders told me is the price
these strangers have to pay
for Democracy, theirs and ours.

OSWALD LE WINTER XXXXXXXXXXX