Not They

Not the gentle goatherd in those wildernesses of desert and hill, nor his
milk-mouthed, dark-eyed child tugging on the rag of her mother's coarse
cloth skirts.
In their timeless innocence they understand nothing of wa
r.
Not those tormented souls driven to the shelter that the whining shells of
Mammon might defile compassion, destroy grace and erase love.
They were neither for nor against, yet in their multitude it is they who were
mown down, they, always th
ey.
Yet it is I who knows the fearsome intellect of war, born of it, torn by it, I the
politic, resolutely against.
It is I, then, I alone, who must stand against the ignorance of might and the
cool sophistication of collateral reve
nge.
My name is known, my address given. I am the enemy if enemy must be
so
ught.
So let them unleash their wretched bombs on m