Three Citizens & one loser

Careworn of what might be lost,

Clairvoyant of foreboding thereafter consequences,

They all stood on oath

Asseverating to give up everything they posses -

Be it sacred or otherwise material wealth

Only to defend the one thing that mattered most.

Writers inordinately racked their brains,

Sprained the wrist bones,

Split unfathomable quantities of ink

Paper, I should imagine you think,

To garner and swot,

For one end: To spell out the reasons

Why we all must die and leave the planet

Rather than live shamed.

However, what was feared most

Nevertheless, The writers bravely waited to commit:

To die by the enemy's sword

For their strychnine and poignant words

Which bulked the enslavement of the minds of the crowds,

In the end did not happen.

Instead, of being sprayed with pellets of gunpowder

They got pelted at

In the same manner it happened before,

By racemes of flowers

When the war came to an end

Them too politicians,

They did not come across the awful face of death,

They swore they would stare at than live in disgrace.

As in before, after the war

They rose rather to fame

And began dreaming the life of comfort

Cushioned with dispensable wealth,

That could also be bequeathed,

Oblivious as ever.

Some have had lost the one thing they dear most.

Only those who had little or no comfort

In the life they had led,

Were summoned to the forefront

And were required to do the at most -

To shed their blood,

Their flesh to tear,

Pulverise their bones to dust;

And one would say as expected,

They did not hesitate,

Responding to the call

Though they knew they would not come back from hell,

Their gruesome stories to recall.

A story that may have had helped,

For the remaining crowds to vast

Yet again its pursuit of material lust

As ever nonchalant,

Some have had sunk deeper

In a blood river,

Paying the price for the war

The living declared they have had won.

But beware the dead have families to spare.

Copyright Haileselassie Girmay

29/8/2000