by Melita Monemvasioti

Waste not your breath in sighs
Nor time in guilt
Make haste!
Anoint daughters with their parents tears
Shroud women in their wedding suit
And bury mothers in their children’s tomb.

You’ve built a palace of sorrow and of gloom
Armies of pestilence and doom, and now you cry?
Make haste!
I think I see some who are yet to die.

Think not of olive trees and groves
Think not of seas and wounded doves
On them you have been sharpening your sword
Centuries’ conquest comes to battered peak
Banners blazing bold, and now that all the meek are dead
Who shall inherit your mounds of blackened gold?

Why bow your head in penitence
Why shrink in shame? Are you not proud
Of how your warlike spirit still survives?
Death marches on
Make haste!
I think I hear of children still alive.