War's Tragic Undertow - A Sonnet Using The Iambic Pentameter Based On The Australian Classic, "My Brother Jack" By George Johnston,

• Vanessa Langenberg, Grade 10
• Poetry
• 2011

“a succession of mutilated... men”:
the sightless remnants of a toxic war,
a relic of man, shattered nerves unsaid.
Sad figures of the haunted and bereaved,
(he) mortgaged his soul, a conscripted martyr;
oh how the euphoria was short-lived.

Maimed, limbless, broken: an “absent father”,
contained horror, the forbearance contrived.
“the price of glory” is a violent lurch:
alcohol and violence, all love devoid.

Between the tea-stirring; shadows of church,
the social and religious diatribe
rising expenses, city enticements
grappling with the remnants of war’s tyrants.