Why? - a poem

Written in 1999, this poem was one of the first I ever wrote of my own free will. It may even have been the very first! I wrote it when I was eleven years old and in my first year of secondary school. We were studying WW2 and reading the moving story Goodnight Mister Tom (which still reduces me to tears fourteen years later), and these studies inspired this poem. I tampered with it a little when I was about 13-14, but only really changed the fourth stanza. I don't know what made me put it in capital letters, but it has been that way for so long that I have chosen to leave it be. This poem was published in an anthology called Flight of Fancy around 2005/6.

WHY?

 

BOMBS, RATIONING, DEATH AND TEARS

WHY PUT SO MANY IN SADNESS?

SO MANY WITH A BROKEN HOME AND HEART

HOW MANY WILL DIE IN THIS MADNESS?

 

TWO BOYS AGED ONLY TWENTY-ONE

“BANG!” ONE YOUNG MAN DIES

NO TIME TO SAY A PRAYER

OR EVEN SHUT HIS DEEP BROWN EYES.

 

AT NINE HE PLAYED WITH GUNS

BUT THEY WERE ONLY TOYS

THE OTHER PERISHES BY HIS SIDE

IT SEEMS LONG AGO THAT THEY WERE BOYS.

 

FAR FROM THE COMFORTS OF HOME

A MAN KNOWS HIS LIFE IS DONE

HE LEAVES BEHIND A PREGNANT WIFE

HE WILL NEVER SEE HIS UNBORN SON.

 

THE REASONS FOR WAR YOU COULD SAY

ARE PEACE, POWER AND PRIDE

WHAT DO WE REALLY GET BACK?

MILLIONS AT WAR HAVE ALREADY DIED.