The Soldier’s
Confusion
They told him to
march,
to carry a gun,
to stand where the thunder of cannons would run.
They gave him a flag,
they gave him a name—
a soldier of honor, a pawn in a game.
He asked not the
reason,
he asked not the why,
for orders are iron that soldiers obey.
Yet deep in the
silence between every shot,
a whisper kept asking:
“What war is this fought?”
The mountains were
strangers,
the fields were unknown,
the faces around him had tongues not his own.
The sky rained with
fire,
the earth shook with pain,
and brothers fell silent like crops in the rain.
He wondered one night
in the cold trench’s breath—
“Who profits from this river of death?”
A bullet may answer,
a bomb may explain,
but truth rarely walks in the shadow of pain.
For somewhere in
chambers of polished debate,
old men draw borders
and call it the fate.
Yet here in the mud,
where the wounded ones lie,
no glory can silence a mother’s deep cry.
A leg may be
shattered,
an arm torn away,
while questions grow louder with each passing day.
Why must a stranger
be turned into foe?
Why must a soldier
not even know?
For war is a storm
made far from the field,
by hands that command
but never must yield.
And nothing is darker,
more cruelly unsure,
than dying for reasons
you never were told.
So history whispers
through graves row by row:
“The soldier obeyed…
but did he ever know?”
