war

I read this sonnet by W. H. Auden the other day and it stuck with me. "Here war is simple like a monument" is the title/first line. It's worth a read.

Here war is simple like a monument:
A telephone is speaking to a man;
Flags on a map assert that troops were sent;
A boy brings milk in bowls. There is a plan

For living men in terror of their lives,
Who thirst at nine who were to thirst at noon,
And can be lost and are, and miss their wives,
And, unlike an idea, can die too soon.

But ideas can be true although men die,
And we can watch a thousand face
Made active by one lie:

And maps can really point to places
Where life is evil now:
Nanking; Dachau.

Wystan Hugh Auden
(1907-1973)