WHAT TRUTH WITHIN CAN A MAN SURVIVE?

What truth within can a man survive? What memory of despair?
Does he know he fights for reasons of which he has no share?
Is it a vision shared together or a hunger fed alone?
For cunning men speak of freedom but secretly dream of a throne.

Men cheer the thundering cannon cloud while shattered souls take wing,
Loosed by the crack of a rifle and the bleeding death it brings.
Men talk big when they play at war and march in the shadow of death,
While alone at night they grow silent and small, and fight for a shaking breath.

They fight in the day like soldiers, but at night dream like broken men,
Then ready their arms and courage next day to fight the same battles again.
For mankind is charmed by battle and destruction beyond all ken,
They’d rather die playing at solders then live like rational men.

So bring out the drums and the trumpets! Wave the flags, let the war songs rise!
We’ll bury our sons and our daughters ‘neath the crowing, glorious lies.
There, they will rest uneasy, midst the others who died in the war,
Forgetting that joy and laughter and love were what they were living for.

And the shadow people will reap their gains and dance in the rich, red blood
Of those who fell in the bullet rain and died in the blackening mud.
What truth within can a man survive? What memory of despair?
Does he know he fights for reasons of which he has no share?

© 2014 Eschate