Lost

There are no winners
in war -- where the
living stand in houses
wrecked by shells,
their lungs coughed
out in the dust of
ashes from the burning
dead. Perhaps,
the victor's crown
might look polished
for a day, but still the
screams and horrors
of ten thousand guns
and lives and loves
snuffed out amid the
keening echo of the wind
dashes against the gold
until it looks no more
burnished, but cold
like the dead -- buried
in unmarked ground
or rotting away to be
discovered a thousand
years from now when
the oceans rise and
fall and ebb away
to reveal bones, white
and crumbling -- a
bullet hole through
a skull that housed thought
of poetry or mathematics,
that held the cure for
whatever ails the world.
That loved, lusted, lived.
There are no winners
in war -- only the dead
and dying remain,
and the keening of
the wind.

© Eleanor Clark
1 June, 2016