CANTO

by Kathleen Dudley

Aye, from the cobble-stoned streets tremoring in the trenches, 

wails and moans, scattered gunshots and mortar fire

blast flesh, shattering dreams enlivened with righteous grief.

Beethoven’s ongoing triplets sweetly melodic, assuage rhythmic

repetitive assault upon youthful glory, screams spat in raucous defiance

with honour of olden, mixed deep in their ancestral blood.

A silent resolution richly infused, paused but not forgotten in

ceilidhs and stories of Bards where their mastery sings loudly 

the forefathers’ warnings, heeding treachery. 

Dissonance screeches like a taut bow upon untuned strings when

perpetrated lies befall the sweetness of a child set well upon the earth

and fast held to mother’s breast, exposing the mark of the beast.

Dearth of nourishment shelter and purpose reach orchestrated levels 

yet banquets abound with plenty, soothing the keepers of the keys

while those beneath their thumbs live in communal misery.

Poets wrote and spoke of what they witnessed with eyes wide and hearts

pounding, Ezra and T.S. dared reveal the red seas flowing upon the masses—

Disciples of truth enduring the relentless surge against their gospels. 

Trickery and debauchery ringing in the spires of the tallest steeples,

numb the people with artifice comforts and addictions doled out to

unsuspecting innocents or ignorant asleep under a blanket of deceit. 

And on and on the triplets roll as if no beginning or end, the lullaby of 

duplicity sung to the women and men whose pallets sated with 

spells, live deadened in the mix of their angst and cries.

With no mortar no trenches no outright blood or gore, the lives well 

captured placed and directed with nary a force upon them, surrender 

senseless to the ageless duplicitous war.