Wednesday, December 25, 2024

“Two Dead Soldiers” - Jean Arasanayagam

 “Two Dead Soldiers”

 

Two dead soldiers in bronze

Lying flat on a battlefield,

Anywhere.

 

Dismembered trunks and heads,

Severed membranes, nerves

Are tangled threads wrapped in blood,

Freezing in ice or clotted with mud.

 

They have no eyes,

they have no tongues

Sightless and blind and speechless

 

Shreds of rags

Flutter in the miserable wind

To cover the corpses.

 

The cloth, the flesh, the skin

Are of one colour and one texture.

 

Outflung and still the cracked bone

Of the broken arm, its crooked wing, unpinioned.

Unweaponed, the slack fingers of those

Useless hands.

 

Two dead soldiers

are a whole battlefield

Two faces, a million.


- Jean Arasanayagam


© Source:https://pdfcoffee.com/poems-by-jean-arasanayagam-pdf-free.html

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