A Child's Memory of a War
The houses are all left in ruin.
The lamp posts are armed with a dying flame,
welcoming the soldiers home.
The wind howls at the sound
of the war raging in the distance.
The sky is blackened out by smoke.
And I am trapped here, in my room,
forced to listen to the gunshots.
Each night the noise grows louder and louder
until I can hear it knocking on my door,
but I am too scare to answer it.
I mean, what can I do?
Because a child only knows how to make wishes,
like a wish for a hopeful new day,
or a wish for the night to end.
But a wish is wish,
and a gunshot is a gunshot,
firing in the distance, rocking me to sleep.
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Submitted on May 02, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 38 sec read
- 1 View
Quick analysis:
| Scheme | XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX |
|---|---|
| Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
| Characters | 605 |
| Words | 129 |
| Stanzas | 6 |
| Stanza Lengths | 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3 |
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"A Child's Memory of a War" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 25 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/64145/a-child's-memory-of-a-war>.
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