Poems on a Just War

The war they fought was a just war
But they didn’t fight it in a just way.
Just wars are great rarities
And it is even rarer to fight them justly
– Maybe it never happened –
Yet most soldiers, like anyone else, try their best, so
There’s not an ounce of blame in this.

Life isn’t just fights, it is also opportunity:
This morning, still in bed reading poems
About a war I know of only by hearsay
I was touched by their plainness.
However, there is more than plainness
Since even the most well-armed survivors must know
So much more than what they’re willing to tell.

Then I put that book aside
Reflecting on youth, the poet’s
Epiphanies behind the twin guns
Or sometime afterward, who cares
And I concluded that the question of justice
Come war, come peace, might entirely depend on
One’s indulgence to not let pass.

January 5, 2017