Peace at any cost?
When you pay with a blank check
the price is too high.
Your blank check never seems
to buy you very much.
Best you shop around.
Tag Archives: They of Valour (with introductions)
Sonnet V: By Their Fruits
I saw and I believed and then I knew;
As brick and mortar fell, and glass and steel;
And blood and flesh and fire, mien, and weal,
And hope, and dream, and aspiration slew;
And friendship, love and heart, and sky once blue
Now green with envy, angry red with zeal
Of hate, of lie, of wound no lie can heal,
And speculation knowingly untrue.
I heard, I disbelieved and then I thought:
How typical that supposition grew
So cravenly away from where it ought
To rest; from certainty that, shining through
This calumny, these wailing filth have wrought
This death–these filth who hide from what is true.
This sonnet is part of a short sequence; click here to read it all:
Intro 5: 9-11-2001
To all those who died,
Or who lost the ones they love:
I dedicate this.
To those left behind:
I wish it could be more than
A few empty words.
Sonnet IV: The Valiant and the Craven
So valiantly hast thou thy battles fought
For everyone we love, as well as we.
Our fathers and our mothers lived to see
The grandchildren thy blood and valour bought.
And what a crime that none today are taught
The sacrifice thou chos’t as thy decree,
The horror thou hast braved so valiantly,
Thy blood with which their apathy was wrought.
How they will rage when next the bugle sounds
And none are left to stand before its call.
How they will curse thy gravestones one and all;
Yet none may wake thee in thy hallowed grounds.
With ramparts left unmanned, they’ll know the why,
And know thy sacrifice before they die.
This sonnet is part of a short sequence; click here to read it all:
Intro 4: They who Know
To all those who know:
I recall when first I knew.
It awed and shamed me.
Sonnet III: The Vigilant
“I teach the use of ordinance to boys.
It’s just a job, not so unlike your own.
I wake up every morning to the drone
Of my alarm, and teach them what destroys
“And kills. A job like yours,” he said, “employing
Skills ones discipline requires. Condone
The harm or not, my job inspires alone
Young men who sought this life. When mine deploys,
“We, rough and ready, make the day our own.”
“But can you quit?” I asked, “you’ve pledged to keep
It–like a wife–for better or for worse.”
“And, quit or fail, I won’t be sought nor thrown
In jail; nor watch my wife, from heaven, weep
Upon my empty coffin in a hearse.”
This sonnet is part of a short sequence; click here to read it all:
Intro 3: To November
“We sleep soundly in
our beds because rough men stand
ready in the night
“to visit vio-
-lence on those who would do us
harm.” – Winston Churchill
David Emeron: Sonnets 