A Condoling Dirge

When chronicles are written,
And history is transcribed,
And men of war bear witness,
Unto sufferings described.
 
When dead and dying swell,
There in regions of battle,
And bloodied snow blankets the terrain,
Unto incursions in Seattle.
 
When Jack Raider was hung,
And his rebel army yielded,
And the red shirts marched in dung,
Unto atrocities they divided.
 
Not a terror, not a terror more,
Onwards where coffins lay,
And bones exposed in the ditches,
Unto a cruelty after midday.
 
O servant, inheritor of death,
Yet, in life and breathing,
Men who surrendered under duress,
Unto repression freezing.
 
Not a beggar, not a beggar seen,
Men of fraud might ne'er fight,
But they died anyway, and so decayed,
Unto a trembling belated night.
 
When the ghosts of men rise,
And populate the earth,
And release foreboding spirits,
Unto a despicable birth.
 
When the malefic fear comes,
And diabolical as they are,
Conspirators of evil, factual in print,
Unto the end of war by far.
 
O to grieve there, till I'm slain,
And have grave so laden,
Where bones and rifles will lie,
Unto a rising quiet brazen.