Children Of Swords

Dismayed daily
by our capacity for violence,
how a desire for it seems
never to fade entirely
from our nature.

But it’s unreasonable
to expect that the children
of swords
will mature into ploughshares
on their own.

They are swords
as we are swords —
built to cut, built to spear
and shed, built to last
and to itch at all times for war.

There isn’t a moral here,
or at least
there’s no intended moral,
certainly nothing you could hang
a blacksmith’s hammer on.

You should probably just move along.
Hold your children tightly to you
and try to pretend they don’t feel like hilts
when you use them
in your war with Death.