But by its nature, it separates and predetermines cost.
Alone on a bloodied battlefield where
the uniforms never mattered--A wartorn landscape of pens and pages
with cannons of treaties, sounding clatter...For purposes and reasons that cause the clarion call
For causes just and dreams denied
For adjustments best for all--
The soldiers fought, the mothers cried
The strong endured and the weaker died
The times grew short and the visions grey
What was wrong or right no one would say...
Across the silent vista of meanings never known
Where an answer lay in hiding due
To a strength not ever shown--
A new reason was deciding
To an end that needs no guiding to
For an answer true and beyond the ways
And the means of all else that they say.
A reason by its nature keeps fact apart from loss
But by its nature, it separates and predetermines cost.
Alone on a bloodied battlefield where
the uniforms never mattered--
A wartorn landscape of pens and pages
with cannons of treaties, sounding clatter...
The statistics child with his specimen jar
of opinions to be rendered
Looked down from his perch on the limb of the tree
Upon the face of the weak surrendered
And separated the hostage
from the free
Confused for a moment, confused with eternity
Denied passage of what he'd seen
Betrayed visions of what he'd been.
He found that a suckling pig had grown
from theories beyond his ken
A new reason from the earth'd been sown
From purposes of indifference then
All around the principals
(But a stutter where lines were blurred)
Were cast aside losers to the invincible
Who'd redivided before division had occurred.
In falling from his precipice of meanings self-assured
Into the maelstrom of the divisions
that his meaninglessness had incurred,
He found that his feet were wearied
and less able than before.
He couldn't help but stand up to
what was less was now needed more.
"Pray, tell us then, most noble sir,
with statements most profound,
What you've heard of the right
in a warzone
that dares not surrender a sound?
But in doing so, pray keep us,
kind sir...
apart from the state of the art--
If you expose our loss
It'll be too much
for the generally accepted, sensitive heart.
So show us the truth to keep us
(as we say)
Safe and secure from harm
But if the truth is too clear and slight
Pray sir, sound mightily an alarm."
'The legs of the lame are not equal:
So is a parable in the mouth of fools.'*
It is a lesson they teach
but never rank
In the meanings of Bible schools.
He answered all the questions
until no answers could be found
He gave them purpose and reasons true
But his own reason ne'er touched the ground...
He found that after all the strewn
After all the unpaid debts due--
That he'd come away with nothing
Which was finally the purpose he'd found.
A child came to him once upon a bustling street
There was no reason put to words...
No meaning or cause
to be discrete--
"Show me the way,"
the child's actions said,
"Lead me to happiness instead of grief,"
he said,
"Keep me with the living and away from the dead,
Stave off my hungers and keep me fed,
Lead by your example where I've never been led."
The streets are full, the times continue on
He mumbled, confused, because of what he'd found
His aims were high
but he touched the ground
So he told him very simply:
"Lead your life your own way
and ignore just where they're bound
Because when the answer is needed
And my advice to you's been heeded
You'll see again what came before
And lead yourself beyond what's in store
For those who found a reason
In the turning of a season."
The child walked away with the answer
Perhaps he'll know the truth someday,
But for now the older child is worried
Because under the circumstances
What else can you say?
--by GORDON C. WONG,
from "What Lies Beyond This
Door",**
copyright 1981 by GORDON C.
WONG
This site was opened on May 19, 1997.