I’ve placed some mines a couple of times,
In fields that looked so pretty,
Those unseen bombs you step upon,
That show no remorse or pity.

With little sense of consequence,
For what I did I believed was right,
At least that’s how it seemed until the dreams,
Awakened me at night,

When children played their childish game,
Called ring around the roses,
And they all were killed in that same field,
When those land mines exploded.

So how can the politicians say,
The end justifies the means?
Until they have been and clearly seen,
The blood, guts and the screams.

How can they dare to sit up there?
Behind their oaken desk,
And ask someone to take a gun,
And lay someone else to rest?

Before the war, like you, I’m sure,
I believed it wrong to kill,
Convinced that I would rather die,
Than that sin to fulfil.

But rhetoric and other tricks,
Set beliefs against themselves,
Until right and wrong no more belong,
To you, but someone else.

And like so many other, soldier brothers,
I believed them to the core.
If you kill your fellow man, you’re damned,
But it’s ok to kill in war.

Almighty God will let you off,
Because you do it in his name,
And everyone behind every gun,
On all sides are told the same.

Until you are more than willing, to do your country’s killing,
And you become desensitised to death,
And a gradual insanity strips away all your humanity,
And compassion, until there’s very little left.

And that’s the time you’ll lay your mines,
As your superior proposes,
And pay no mind to nursery rhymes,
Or ring around the roses.

Unless some day, some child at play,
Is blown to smithereens,
And then like me, at night you’ll see,
That child in all your dreams,

Forever in slow motion
You’ll see their final game,
That starts with childish laughter,
And ends in blood, bone, smoke and flame.

Time and again, but all in vain,
You’ll try to shout your warning,
Until in deep regret and soaked in sweat
You wake the following morning.

But you won’t wake to the bugle
As everyone supposes,
In your head children are singing
Ring around the roses.

Ring around the roses,
A pocketful of poses,
Attishoo attishoo
They all fell down.

By S.E.Ralph

12-6-2017