War

How easily we go to war chasing dreams and demons;
how smoothly do we follow lies into realms of hell,
while telling those who listen, and ourselves,
that it is in a good, just cause and it is something
which is being done for  the benefit of all. As if
good could come through dull, dead eyes and shreds
of decimated flesh. As if good could come from lives
dismembered, as no more, than mounds of  bone and
meat; as if good could ever come from suffering and death.
But deception is a determined friend and cannot
be easily dismissed; although it can be easily denied.
And even as we stand by watered gutters where
the blood runs forcefully on its way, and the shadows
of gaunt, bitter, broken buildings cast their dark
shapes upon our faces, still we can hold the hand of
deception and smile into the crippled depths
of our belief. Still we can tell ourselves that what is
being done, in our name, for it is always in our name,
is just and does have purpose. Although, in the
splintered shatterings of night and reason, a small
voice murmurs it cannot be so. But small voices
are easily made silent, even though, they will echo
through time and mind, in ways which bring in
sickened, stark relief, images of remembering.
But deception is always there; cold fingers clasping,
holding firm, to the dying warmth of conscience;
whispering that it is not for us to change the world,
but to trust as the world is changing. However terrible
that change might be. The longer one believes in
the words which deception casts upon the ground
of cold compassion, the easier it is to keep believing.
It is only when the Soul sighs, deep and grieving,
that some will gather themselves up, from the rutted
furrows in which they have been planted, and demand
change. But the sigh of Soul is so like that of
whispered deception, that one must listen very carefully,
if it is ever to be heard, or not mistaken, for the wind.


Reflections on listening to Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH96tuRA3L0