i didn't raise the flag

when the corpse was lowered

and the body became seed

planted for another war.

i wept as the volleys rang

and the awesome silence revealed the truth.

for these dead are fodder

feeding the machines of revenge

raked into piles like dry leaves

to be burned on the funeral pyre.

there's a question i raise.

there's protest of this charade.

why aren't the marshals of this holocaust

the first ones in the grave?

*I mustn't have had much imagination. For a long time I believed that the Church could only exist the way secular societies did. After all, wasn't the essential thing to be able physically to pass on the Word and the    Eucharist?  It didn't matter if the visible Church was a party to inhumanity. It was a question of incarnation.     It was up to some of its children, who had been nourished by the Church, to live Christianity dangerously. But they'd better not expect the Church to run to their aid!  It's more apt to reject them - except for beatifying them after death has made them inoffensive and useful. The harsh law of necessity prevailed in all this, as when superpowers disown their own spies. For what society would endure if it glorified the faithless steward, the prodigal son, the worker of the eleventh hour, and didn't wage war against its enemies?  We'll believe almost anything in order to justify harmony and serenity.

-Jean Sulivan