The Great War

by Panos Panagiotopoulos

“Qui plume a, guerre a. Ce monde est un vaste temple dédié à la discorde.”
“To hold a pen is to be at war. This world is one vast temple consecrated to discord.”
--Voltaire--

There is a war,
and this war goes on forever.
You won’t know it’s there;
no one will tell you about it.

Survivors of the war have no scars to show,
they have no limbs missing.
In their eyes, one could see,
if one would choose to,
the battlefields, cities in ruins,
endless nights under a red sky,
and when they speak,
if one would choose to listen,
one could hear the distant echoes of gunfire
and explosion.

Walk the streets;
ride the subway;
somewhere along your journey you will find them,
you will hear them whispered, maybe,
you will see them on a wall about to crumble
from their weight;
you will finally know the words,

verses of spoken poetry,
spoken bullets of war poetry,
pronounced fiercely,
slowly,
violently,
words that roll like tanks on tongues of gravel,
words in neat piles,

ammo for the war that is fought within.

There is a war,
and this war goes on forever.
You won’t know it’s there;
you won’t know that you are fighting it.

The war leaves no scars to show,
no stories from the battlefield to share.
Only the distant echoes
of gunfire and explosion,
in your voice.