10/28/2011

They are Coming Home.


They are coming home for Christmas.

I’ve been hoping.
Its been a long time coming,
And now they are coming home.

A whole generation gone to war
And why?
I can’t remember,
I don’t think I ever knew.

All I know is they
Were young,
Professional,
And maybe willing,
If, not that, maybe job hungry.

But now they are coming home
For Christmas,
And they will find home strange.

We will listen to them,
But not for too long,
Things here have moved on.

The few who talk about the dead
Will talk about the forty-four hundred,
And the thirty – three thousand wounded.
Nobody will talk much about the Iraqi dead,
Their numbers are not like ours,
They are as many as the stars
On a desert night.

By the rivers of Babylon
A child will hear the rumble of
War machines as they pass by
And wonder who these people are
And why they were here,
And wave goodbye.

“Goodbye.”

Farewell warriors,
Fare forward voyagers.

At home there are flowers in the field,
And words of gratitude,
And a mortgaged nation.

It is a Christmas that could use a gift.
You are that gift, but you know that.

We will wonder why we ever sent you
or let you go.

Welcome home.


(And this from Pink Floyd)




6 comments:

  1. Amen. Amen. Amen. To the end of the war and Pink Floyd.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The strange part will be STAYING home... eventually.

    A view from the inside:

    We went to war. And we won.

    Then it turned out the Pottery Barn rules did apply, so they moved the goalposts.

    And we won again.

    Then it turned out that when they moved the goalposts the first time, they REALLY broke the system. So they moved the goal posts again.

    And we won. Again.

    Turns out they didn't move the goal post quite far enough that last time; there were a couple things that, well, kind of got overlooked. So...

    And we won. Again. For what may actually be the final time.

    4 campaigns, 4 stars. OTOH, the mountain resort's still running...

    CW3 B

    ReplyDelete
  3. What I wonder is, why Christmas? Why not today? Get on the plane, leave behind whatever doesn't fit, kick the dust off the boots, and bring them home now. It won't help my grandson, but it might well help someone else's....Mike

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great that it's over; inexcusably stupid war to start with. A country the British couldn't subdue in the 19th c [only one they couldn't, I believe - in 1842 the Afghans slaughtered an entire British army (troops mainly Indian, of course) allowing a single man escape to tell the tale] and the Russians couldn't subdue in the 20th. The US's financial support of the ant-Russian forces had interesting long-term consequences, of course.

    ReplyDelete

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