Meet War's Fate

• Zakaria Jamal, Grade 10
• Poetry
• 2022

… Can you hear stepping amputee soldiers
of gangrene with their dead silent cries of pain
and do you see those
men who fought but still fight the tragic brain
with their eyes filled with mud blood and shrapnel
and of toxic smells
that mustard gas drowned their comrades on land
and notice the tragic tales they tell

, but what can you feel
but that fluttering sympathy for them
as their feelings become preordained pain
and the pain becomes their preordained feelings

, and how their mind slowly deteriorates
like those amputee soldiers once did?