Originally Posted by
PrinceMyshkin
I CANNOT HATE
The spear of dawn serrates the sleeping hillside
smearing lurid spills of light across its darkened pelt;
this haze like steaming perspiration,
undercurrents deep beneath its sleek and heaving flanks
throw ripples through the rock,
a stamp-mark on the coal dust,
horns caged in by twisted towers
framed by ragged beams of daybreak.
My father sprang intact from these cold rocks
and now lies fossilised in those same strata that gave birth to him,
embedded in the darkest tomb a man could choose,
no breathing space in there,
his corpse impressed from toil then crushed by time.
I cannot hate these hills outside my window
any more than I can hate the waxing sun,
although its light brings suffering to each new day.
To hate those hard, black mountains,
curse that glinting devil with its drooling maw,
its sharded teeth and gloating grin,
is to deny my father dignity;
his choice to scrape and claw his living
from those cherished rocks.
I cannot hate these hills outside my window
any more than I can hate his stubborn pride,
his split black nails and gritty tide mark,
blisters blue from blast not friction,
heaps of rusted slag piled high with cold despair,
the waste, the tainted streams,
the gravity of air.
A continent away
another mountain, barren, treeless,
scarred by craters
pestilent with jagged bones and rotting flesh and bright red clay;
an alien landscape scalded white with heat and hatred.
That hot white sun a galaxy away,
a sun that scorches every breath
and burns each shadow into glaring light
and etches tear-stains in the bitter salt;
its touch as sharp as any gutting blade.
I cannot hate the villages;
he wrote and told me all about them, see;
the stench of burning dung and garbage,
peasant farmers smoking flimsy roll-ups,
playing dominoes ‘til sunset,
watching football on their satellite tvs.
They did not choose to lose their fields to battle,
had no wish to watch a war outside their door.
Their hills are just as innocent as ours;
they had no choice but watch him suffer,
writhe with muted fury
as their valleys carried back and forth the echo of explosion,
shredding pity in a screech of helpless desolation.
I cannot even hate this war that made me proud to be a mother;
why demean the boy’s ambition,
fighting for another’s freedom that was never his to sanction?
Torn to dust beneath an alien desert sun:
the tainted scent of war deodorised
then helicoptered here from Helmand.
brought back home inside a flag-decked coffin;
surely better that
than held to ransom in a coal mine,
ever out of reach but never out of sight.