Nunquam Iterum!

 

Dear Wilfred

Thank you for your honesty

Without your vivid colours

These experiences would be shadows

Colourless and somehow unreal

But now we see sickly colours of the gas

We feel the helpless panic of the scurry

We touch the comrade writhing in the deadly sea

 

Your stressed heartbeat

The hopelessness of loss

Despair at the trudge

The deathly trudge

Of not yet ghosts

Advancing to their fate

 

And now we have the human touch

Of death before your eyes

Of death before our eyes

Reflected in your vivid words

 

We hear your desperate call

And the guilt in your survival

Whilst others die

We turn away from

Images cast in gore and blood

Too sensitive for those who were not there

But still we feel the impact

Of your bitter words

 

And in the end all you have are hopes

That this will not happen again

This will not be a legacy

For your children and theirs

 

That lessons learned in school

Will not be of glory

But death soil

Hurt and loss

 

And the old lie will be lost to history

In the archaic language it is intoned

Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori?

 

Nunquam

Nunquam

Nunquam Iterum!