A crimson winter:
Nanking burning,
A young man trampling
Her sons and daughters, just two
Of a hundred thousand tabi sandals.

His rifle cracked the air,
His mortars blew apart homes,
And his bayonet steamed from
The blood of a thousand and one
Old men, baby girls and their mothers.

On the young man came:
Rounding up defenders,
Carving up bystanders,
Abused from the top down,
He vented his malice.

The women were no more than hogs,
And the men much less, and
For seven weeks the young man
Wreaked a foul havoc in the streets,
Driving over mounds of decayed flesh.

The young man is now an old,
Small thing, shrunken and withered.
He has two grandsons and a wife of
Sixty years. He sees flashes,
Sparse impressions of his deeds as
The smell of tea wafts to him.

The old man takes a sip, frowning.
That's war, he tells himself,
Nobody pines for the Khan's victims,
Do they? He was just doing what
Warriors always did. Why does it
Matter now? It's just the same.

He thinks, telling himself he will be
Judged and vindicated by the god of
Our age: History. He sleeps well.
Then he chokes: a rattled breath.
He sees the young man he was,
And the young man sees him.

And all around him, he sees the
Corpses in the gutters,
Corpses in the ponds,
Their grey, bloated flesh stirring
With fat maggots, and he feels his skin
Blanching, sloughing, and stirring
In perfect synchrony with them.



© Miyamoto Yoshi