NaPM April 7 2014

[Brownlie]

I prayed by clasping folded hands
And wondered whether god
Could hear my buzzing breaths beneath
The blasts of cannon law

Imprinting blunt impacts in snow
And turning frozen shards
Into a phrase of hoary veils
That draped our eyes in dark

And set me digging up machines
Perverting wombs inside
The soiled cope of nightly earth
That I would open wide

To turn the nectar buried deep
Below to cannon balls
Of gleaming iron more rigid
Than holy words of awe

But I was just a cog, a tin
Enshrouded youth abroad
Who once imbibed cathedral light
To join the battle god.

Well you win some you lose some I suppose