A2) Learning Lessons Poem by Bill Smith

Take a walk through Pol Pots fields
Sculptured white with bone
Come live beneath a Lebanon sky
And make believe it’s home
Breathe deep the martyr’s dusty breath
Laced with innocent screams
See the towers fall to earth
The nightmare of your dreams
Wash it down with Columbine Red
Lie low a Dresden night
See ghosts in stripes through barbed wire fence
Convince me they were right

Die silent in the Afghan hills
Roast in a desert storm
See a child run from the flames
On a sunny Vietnam morn
Ride upon a train of death
Start your day alive
Don’t bother packing sandwiches
For you’ll be dead by five
Hear the hum of death my friend
Ride a bus to hell
Take a tour of foreign fields
Where a generation fell

Sing for me a Dixie song
Where brother shot at brother
Talk to me of Holy wars
Another grieving mother
Convince me that your wrongs are right
Your God’s the only one
Live with the dead in yesterday
For them tomorrows gone
Wear a Rose of red or white
Bear a flag with stars
There’s boxes waiting to be filled
And bombs to plant in cars

What is history for my friend?
But to learn from our mistakes
What if we choose to simply ignore?
The path that hatred takes
The circle goes round and around
The cycle of death repeats
Until the day whole world joins
Where hell and heaven meets
On that day there’ll be no more
Just a cloud in the sky to show
That the history books aren’t worth a toss
If the world don’t want to know