Hala Jean Hammond: War’s black hatred

====

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

American writers on peace and against war

Women writers on peace and war

====

Hala Jean Hammond
Hate

Peace…will you buy it with blood and tears?
With women despoiled, with children’s dark fears?
Crushed under the wheels, men…give in vain;
But deep in the earth-holes hearing always the rain…
Of shrapnel.

Conquering…conquered! Bend the knee
To bayonet-blazoned apostasy.
Seeding in souls; strange plants to grow
Out of its loins; and who to know
Whither the wind its pollen shall blow
At midnight?

The heavens are brass to cannons’ boom;
And rent the earth with a hell-simoon
Led hard by Death…Let us go away…
No, not to preach, nor even to pray;
But with murderous blade to smite, to slay,
Black hatred.