INTRODUCTION

We are now on Day #6 of this 7-day series of war poems which will culminate on November 11th. On Day #1, I already gave a pithy intro to the series. You can still consult that intro if you would like to understand more about it. I also presented a double-sonnet entitled “Another Side of War” which examined the bellicose nature of the belligerent, divisive Left-Right paradigm in politics. On Day #2, I presented another double-sonnet, entitled “Make Yourself a No-One”. It opened up how to respond when your government wages war against its own population by introducing a digital “Bitte Ihre Unterlagen!” (“Papers, please!”) society. On Day #3, I presented a poem entitled “When Wars Become a Warcrime”, which deals with the terrible toll that warring takes on its combatants who so easily become dehumanized merely by being in a “theatre” in which anything goes, regardless of any conventions. On Day #4, I presented a poem entitled “The Cosmic Struggle”, which took Matthew 24:6 as its starting point to show the place of war in the cosmos and the struggle which underlies it . Yesterday, on Day #5, I presented a sonnet entitled “Another Way of Killing”, which explored how waging war goes much further than merely fighting on a battlefield with physical weapons. Today, on Day #6, I present a sonnet which was inspired by the US government changing the name of a department from being “of Defense” to “of War”, which seems to be rather portentous and menacing.

A Sonnet: “Killing Redefined”

They changed the name to Ministry of War
or something else along those hawkish lines.
But I love words which make my soft heart soar,
not listening to how killing’s redefined.

Will next it be the Ministry of Peace?
That ministry waged war in Orwell’s book,
and pledged that state of things would never cease.
Warmongers never let you off the hook.

It’s vain to think there’ll be peace in our time;
for war’s a cash-cow making fortunes for
the rogues up to their necks in filth and slime.
And where there’s muck there’s brass, the spoils of war.

For conflict’s so endemic: It’s bizarre.
That’s why I wrote this: “War is Who We Are”.

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[Tomorrow, November 11th, Day #7, the final day of the 7-day series of war poetry, there will be a substantial poem showing how all so-called war is merely an extreme external manifestation of the conflictual elements which lie within the depraved human heart of unregenerate mankind. The title is: “War is Who we Are”. Prepare to be disquieted].

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2025
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

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