Well I have and in fact
 more than one and I'll
 tell you this too

 I wrote one against
 Algeria that nightmare
 and another against

 Korea and another
 against the one
 I was in

 and I don't remember
 how many against
 the three

 when I was a boy
 Abyssinia Spain and
 Harlan County

 and not one
 breath was restored
 to one

 shattered throat
 mans womans or childs
 not one not

 one
 but death went on and on
 never looking aside

 except now and then
 with a furtive half-smile
 to make sure I was noticing.

Poems on war sometimes seem so useless and uncalled for, like flinging bits of confetti at this pitiless juggernaut. This poem sort of captures that, right from the throwaway tone it begins with to the bland monstrousness of the end.

— Amulya

Martin adds

This is indeed a brilliant poem, but its very brilliance serves to mask an underlying fallacy. The purpose of war poetry is not so much to “restore breath to one shattered throat”, but to show people what exactly war is, in a way that the safely sanitised capsules delivered by newspapers and television cannot or do not. “The pity of war, the pity war distilled” needs to be adequately conveyed to the populace-at-large, and I submit that poets, as much as anyone else, have served to counteract the “dulce et decorum est” blood-and-glory mindset of an earlier day.

— Martin