Heather Spears
It's Not New
As if it were new
this terrible strapping on of bombs
this wanting to die in the middle of the dying
but it’s not
I saw that grainy film - the field
the rows and rows of makeshift posts
jammed into the soil and each boy standing,
learning to handle a wooden toy
rigged to resemble, for any playing boy,
the front of a cockpit.
There were no more planes to spare
to teach them. The war
was already lost. They were as young as thirteen. Thousands.
They learned - as in some ghastly prophecy –
only a little how to fly,
enough for their purposes.
This happened way back when I was a child
the reasons have hardly changed
Onishu not Osama, Kamikaze not al Khaida
it’s still about honour and obedience and how to hate
and the certain dream of being right and good
and immortal. They almost all died doing it, the few
who by some freak came out among islands and crept back,
hung around in the streets,
ashamed to go home.
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