Whether within or without, it's strange to think how much carnage is employed while seeking to end the carnage.
Blood and screams and villainy and virtue, all exercised with steely and devoted purpose.
Carnage.
Until at last exhaustion enters, wreathed in light and hailed as peace. It lingers a while ...
And then the energies regroup and clamor for some new improvement, some better way, some warmer hearth. Lazy, lauding loving cannot win the day: Unsheathe the sword!
Lord knows it's important, this latest carnage within or without.
To arms! To arms! After this battle -- or this one or this one or this one -- there will be peace, of course.
It's just up ahead, around that turn, just out of reach. Charge! Be valiant! Believe and hope! Carnage is a small price for peace within or without.
And on the edges of every clearing, half-seen in a morning mist where carnage will be wrought, the sure-footed unicorn of peace slips without remorse into the waiting forest.
Along those lines, this is the last verse of a song I wrote at the onset of the First Iraq War:
ReplyDeleteJust kill all the killers and someday we'll win peace
Slay with swords of justice and we'll finally win release.
Put ourselves in bondage, so someday we'll be free
But looking in the mirror, who will we see?