The glass of wine is dry
The music done:
There is the evening, the dark
Some pursuit to fill the hour.

Yesterday, many years ago, my goal
Glowed before me, unending yet precise:
I would walk the streets
Swaggering from school to home
And home to school knowing each day
For the impostor it was;
I alone like a god possessed a goal
Worthy of my death.
But it would taunt me, this goal,
And I in gladness would scorn the Cross
That held other people's pain
The way the poet holds each poem
Inside their head

I would wander from battle to peace
Wondering when my god would give me
A good war, again

My glass of wine is dry
The music done
This cottage airs despair;
I alone who saught the warrior god
Am done, tired from too much silence
Too little violence.
Each day holds an equation
I cannot solve since I do not wish
To solve myself with Peace.

I in triumph might try to gather words -
High Priest, perhaps the Mage -
While he who is always me
Would laugh, gather up his gun
And kill.

I am dry, my music done.
Only thoughts keep death away
Yet it is my thought, its damned
Insistence, which rains away
The shallow soil of goals:
Book or poem, nirvana-God,
All are dry, mumbling words
As a madman at full moon.

O God give us a good war

DW Myatt