Two Poems on the Iraqi War ["The Gluttonous Guns," and "The Letter"]
By: Dennis Siluk
The Gluttonous Guns
[Iraqi War, 2005]
Look at the hot, Gluttonous guns of war
Swift they go, to kill our dearest ones;
Brothers, and dads, sons and husbands:
Swift we go to the pitiless call of war!
There is little sleeping going on at night…
In the gluttonous sands of the Iraqi war
Back home there’re wailing and weeping
Ov’r this pot of crickets, an endless fight!
War, war, war, and hark to the beast of war—
High, and near, low and clear, clear, clear:
I don’t see one, not one millionaire there?
Not one gluttonous, greedy millionaire!…
#737 6/24/05
No Letters
[Iraqi War]
“Where are you going?” I asked my son
—on this, sunny of summer days
“I’m going to Iraq to fight for freedom,”
I didn’t know what to say
…so off he went, to fight in the sands
In this far off place called Iraq—
Proudly he looked back at me,
As I prayed, he’d soon come back.
Why, doesn’t’ he write, my son, my son
I wait for the mail each day;
It’s when you don’t know
Your mind starts to go, go—!
Imagining awful strange things.
I got a letter today, today—it said:
They fought a great battle by Baghdad;
And many lost there lives, I guess—
And the truth of the matter is, it is
My son was among the dead!…
He’ll never come home again, I know
And my nights are long and thin
But he proved to be, noble and true
Who fought for hope and freedom?
For a country that owes him everything.
#740 6/2005
Author Dennis Siluk, his new book is out, called, “Spell of the Andes,” now at http://www.amazon.com. He lives in Peru, a good part of the year, and in St. Paul, Minnesota