Frozen Thunder: Reflections on a Painting of the Battle of Waterloo
The short, staccato beats, the cries,
the moans of wounded, smell of musket smoke
Captured in time, silent
Still, like gray slated stones
That sit so neatly, row on endless row.
We have forgotten them
Their names, their lives, their private battles
Their loves, their families, their secret hopes and dreams
In that place where hope curdles
Clumps together, runs like pus
Weeping from infected wounds.
Marching down hills, the soldiers came.
In pressed, stiff uniforms, they came.
Floods bursting from the dam of reason,
Soldiers came.
In that place where the sun darkened.
From sticks and stones to guns, to bombs
Through the days and down the years
War goes on.