The Silence is Beautiful

 

 

     There is no reason on Earth they came,

No reason I could understand at least,

Twenty-three years ago,

A reception waited for he to return -

The frost from the Balkan Winter

Still fresh, still solid upon the lapel

That sported the Veteran badge,

 

A tired and slouched gait

Frequented bars he never knew the name,

His love crying scalding tears

For the heat the fire would bring,

And his death,

His death the first of many.

 

The system broke his back,

Didn’t care or try to understand his sorrow -

Instead seeking only incarceration of his soul,

And then they came in earnest,

Frequenting the furrows of his mind

And extinguishing all thought,

 

Whispers!

Insidious, sinister and beckoning his end,

Made daily life a torment – society

Didn’t want to comprehend,

Never wanted to acknowledge

Or take responsibility,

And death returned again and again.

 

The pills,

The raping of his self

By insistence of depot spears

By medics never ceased the onslaught,

Instead only tempting

Leaps of faith into chasms

Where metal chariots would turn

Roads to red,

 

He didn’t care for life,

He didn’t care for life.

 

Twenty-three years ago,

The clock stopped ticking,

His sense of time stolen by cacophany,

The noise unbearable as weapons cocked

And Morse dropped and the voices,

The voices taking everything he lived for.

 

She was a ghost unto him

Never relinquishing hold,

But Spirit Release told her ‘go!’

Searing laughter from

Onlookers made ridicule his

Wasted life, as in trance like state

She solemnly went.

 

For twenty-three years

The external cajoled blades upon

His wrists, then silence fell

As she left,

 

Silence,

So beautiful,

So eloquent and restful,

So meaningful in all that it encompassed,

Voiced a multitude of possibilities

That could remain his life,

The clock again beginning to

Tick but now, it could be heard,

 

Recovery could be offered,

Despite the wrinkles and shaking hands,

But only if,

The trauma could be settled

The bombs and bullets gone

The refugees returned,

Twenty-three years of warfare

Healed – fading in the distance,

But only, if chance and tears

Could release the sentence of the hurt.

 

 

Michael J Waite 13^th February 2017.