Zuhair: Accursed thing, war will grind you between millstones

Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Zuhair/Zuhayr (520-609)
From The Poem of Zuhair
Translated by F. E. Johnson

“And war is not but what you have learnt it to be, and
what you have experienced, and what is said concerning it,
is not a story based on suppositions.

“When you stir it up, you will stir it up as an accursed
thing, and it will become greedy when you excite its greed
and it will rage fiercely.

“Then it will grind you as the grinding of the upper millstone
against the lower…”