Where has peace gone?
Where is justice?
Where is mercy?
Where is love?
We hurl them away.
Hands holding weapons
have to let go
of everything else.
Babies are slaughtered,
not swaddled or held.
Families murdered,
no longer cherished.
Forget about laughter of children.
Forget about beauty of lovers.
Such things are the dream-stuff
of privileged fools.
Where is our vaunted humanity?
Why must we slaughter each other?
Are we really purchasing heaven?
Grievances over millennia
drive us insane, our ideals
transformed into bloodlust.
Mountains of corpses
reek to the heavens.
No love, no mercy,
no justice, no peace.
The math is horribly simple.
We’re killing our way into hell.
~ Wry Welwood
October 2023.
* Ubi sunt: “A number of medieval European poems begin with this Latin phrase meaning ‘Where are they?’ By posing a series of questions about the fate of the strong, beautiful, or virtuous, these poems meditate on the transitory nature of life and the inevitability of death. The phrase can now refer to any poetry that treats these themes.” Poetryfoundation.org
Previously published in Scrittura on medium.com.