1
Cloaking white mists sweep the moor.
Eerie is the silence there,
No clanking of steel on steel,
No muffled dying voices,
NOTHING!
Only silence ...
A watery sun appears on the cloth.
The artist choosing an insipid yellow.
Out of the gloom, a solitary tree plays sentinel,
lifeless and leafless, bent double by gale force winds.
But still the silence and still nothing moves.
And then come distant sounds,
the splash of an oar, close to the shore beside the empty moor,
on the air, whispered voices.
The first line of assault has arrived.
The first light of dawn lifts the doom.
And with much complaint, the mists finally clear
revealing a desolate landscape, the soon to be battlefield.
The place where the chosen will be slain,
Soon it will come to pass and it will be a reality.
2
Sleepers in the lakeside village were unaware, as marauders crept into their tiny hamlet.
No warning came from the night sentries, who now lay dead in a pool of blood,
throats cut deeply by attacker’s savage knives.
Sadly, the slaughter had begun.
The temple was the first to go, brought to the ground by hellish flame,
the priest, a kind and gentle man, decapitated by a mighty axe swung by a warrior,
with a demonic mind, the leader of this savage band.
Mercenaries paid by ‘the house of god’ to purge the lands of Satan and his pagan ways
Mercenaries from another shore, to whom the slaughtering of innocents was a way of life.
Next to die by mindless deed were the young men of adolescence,
so called vessels of the wrongs of Satan,
most ne’er waking again on this land of fear,
sleeping like lambs murdered by power mad wolves,
nothing more than dismembered corpses now in a village of flames.
Then those who could fight, hopeless in their plight,
defended their village against the marauding killers,
gentle folk of lore and land were they,
murdered because their ways contrasted another’s point of view.
Then after the killings, the savage and brutal raping of the women began.
Those who objected died by blood stained knife,
willingly they struggled to be released,
and those that lived were never the same again.
Taken by the savages to become harlots of another land.
3
And though the mists of time hides the faces of those guilty of the crime,
the head of the church who made the decree that put thousands to death,
at the hands of the butcher’s murderous knives.
Know these crimes took place,
And from on high the heavens look down but never criticise,
for the guilty bear sentence for their crimes,
not in human court; for they were ‘above’ the law on earth,
nor by a god’s critical view,
But by their own admission ...
Midgard faces another act in the murder plays,
Another moorland awaits the cries of the dying,
and though the killing toys may have changed in time,
the end result is just the same.
Man killed by man because their view contradicts another,
I wonder if man will ever learn the lesson
and let fellow man life with contrasting views?
Mankind you need to live together ...
and ignore that insistent demon voice which demands you divide to rule;
It is time you laid down your weapons,
and life together in harmony ...
That way you may learn to move to a new station on the wheel ....
This version written by Matthew James Saturday, 4 January 2003 (On the eve of the invasion of Iraq)
