War Poems Quotes

“They want us to be afraid.
They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes.
They want us to barricade our doors
and hide our children.
Their aim is to make us fear life itself!
They want us to hate.
They want us to hate 'the other'.
They want us to practice aggression
and perfect antagonism.
Their aim is to divide us all!
They want us to be inhuman.
They want us to throw out our kindness.
They want us to bury our love
and burn our hope.
Their aim is to take all our light!
They think their bricked walls
will separate us.
They think their damned bombs
will defeat us.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that my soul and your soul are old friends.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that when they cut you I bleed.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that we will never be afraid,
we will never hate
and we will never be silent
for life is ours!”
― Kamand Kojouri

“There is a monstrous garden in the sky
Nightly they sow it fresh. Nightly it springs,
Luridly splendid, towards the moon on high.
Red-poppy flares, and fire-bombs rosy-bright
Shell-bursts like hellborn sunflowers, gold and white
Lilies, long-stemmed, that search the heavens' height...
They tend it well, these gardeners on wings!

How rich these blossoms, hideously fair
Sprawling above the shuddering citadel
As though ablaze with laughter! Lord, how long
Must we behold them flower, ruthless, strong
Soaring like weeds the stricken worlds among
Triumphant, gay, these dreadful blooms of hell?

O give us back the garden that we knew
Silent and cool, where silver daisies lie,
The lovely stars! O garden purple-blue
Where Mary trailed her skirts amidst the dew
Of ageless planets, hand-in-hand with You
And Sleep and Peace walked with Eternity.....

But here I sit, and watch the night roll by.
There is a monstrous garden in the sky!

(written during an air raid, London, midnight, October 1941)”
― Margery Lawrence

“War and peace

Humanity has fought many wars,
But won none,
Because even in peace the victors carry its scars,
That they can share with no one,

Because when they saw their comrade fall,
They saw a friend die,
When they were smashed against the pitiless wall,
The human within them did die,

Resurrecting a beast from within,
That they try to leave behind, but it walks with them,
And becomes their penance for what was not their sin,
And then they spend a lifetime with this beast and with them,

Whom they lost in the war,
Their fellow comrades part of the same legion,
And even in times of peace, in dreams the demons of war chase them far,
There, where all emotions die, all sentiments sink, a death forsaken region,

Where they are cursed to live forever,
In the phantoms of war that chase them every day and every night,
Because they have seen their fellow comrades die forever,
And this aches their inward and memory invoked sight,

They maybe soldiers who are meant to kill,
But I wonder what they think when they see a fellow human on the other end,
The enemy who they shall kill even even at the cost of killing their own will,
Thus is born the beast within and for the human that it now feeds on, it is the end!”
― Javid Ahmad Tak, They Loved in 2075!

“War and peace

Humanity has fought many wars,
But won none,
Because even in peace the victors carry its scars,
That they can share with no one,

Because when they saw their comrade fall,
They saw a friend die,
When they were smashed against the pitiless wall,
The human within them did die,

Resurrecting a beast from within,
That they try to leave behind, but it walks with them,
And becomes their penance for what was not their sin,
And then they spend a lifetime with this beast and with them,

Whom they lost in the war,
Their fellow comrades part of the same legion,
And even in times of peace, in dreams the demons of war chase them far,
There, where all emotions die, all sentiments sink, a death forsaken region,

Where they are cursed to live forever,
In the phantoms of war that chase them every day and every night,
Because they have seen their fellow comrades die forever,
And this aches their inward and memory invoked sight,

They maybe soldiers who are meant to kill,
But I wonder what they think when they see a fellow human on the other end,
The enemy who they shall kill even at the cost of killing their own will,
Thus is born the beast within, and for the human that it now feeds on, it is the end!”
― Javid Ahmad Tak, They Loved in 2075!

“A bomb here and a bullet there

A bomb here and a bullet there,
A wall riddled with bullets everywhere,

A man dead, a woman crying,
A young child crying and for nobody’s sake dying,

A building collapsing somewhere,
Homes on fire everywhere,

A soldier scanning for enemies,
A civilian seeking innocence in these wary faces who too are born of fairies,

A state of emergency declared in the war torn regions,
It is a crisis of all sorts, for humans, for every life form, and for my once familiar flock of pigeons,

Feelings of nothingness and nowhere appear to dominate,
Because that is what happens to mind when you have nothing to share but only hate,

A bullet to kill someone you don't even know,
A bomb to destroy a home that for someone is all he/she could ever know,

All gone, all lost, all turned to ash,
And from the sky a plane falls, it appears to be a fateful crash,

Where someone will die soon,
And it will be missed by many, and ah the pain of the moon,

To not find him anywhere not even in the sky,
For when you crash in wars you do not die,

A part of you lies on Earth and a part of you hangs somewhere in the Sky,
Confusing the angel of death whether to claim the remains that lie on the Earth or the hopes that died in the Sky,

Wars do not end when bullets are not fired and bombs do not fall anymore,
Because those who lose their hopes to wars are in a state of war forever and its immortal pain is what their hearts cannot ignore,

For a few it is just about a bomb here and a bullet there,
Unable to see injured memories and dying hopes everywhere!”
― Javid Ahmad Tak, They Loved in 2075!

“The real cost
Of Kurukshetra

Was the moment
When you disappeared
Over the horizon
At the end of our universe

That moment
When you looked back
And couldn't see me
When I strained my eyes
But couldn't see you

The monumental
Incalculable
Cost
Of war
Was an empty horizon.

It always has been,
Krishna.”
― Leena Saldanha, Radha

“Ne'er Fade Away by Stewart Stafford

The hillside piper's requiem,
Guides old soldier's bones,
To slain brothers of his youth,
No longer a marching memory.

His scars, Valhalla's roadmap,
His medals, coins for Charon,
His conquests, the beacon fire,
His blood scours the path ahead.

This churned earth is now home,
Weeping craters, foxholes beatified,
Barbed wire hands joined in praying,
The minefield of life cleared for us all.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“War and ceasefire

There was a war followed by a ceasefire,
Swaths of land lay covered in ashes and dead men and women,
Beside them lay still unfilled dreams and many a desire,
Wherever one looked there appeared no end to them then,

Because a country defeated in war,
Enters into the state of passive spirit,
Where to the victor, spirited men and women of the defeated country appear too few and too far,
And they rush to assume this is it, their end, and the end of it!

Followed by two immediate actions,
Repatriation by the winning side,
And reparation by the losing side while dealing with endless sanctions,
And behind them their lost spirits hide,

But as years pass by and time grows older,
The defeated side realises the losses it suffered,
The men it lost, and the women who fought in ways bolder,
And the living ones, the paying ones, look at their spirits battered,

And they hear echoes from the past,
Few calling a mother, few a father, many a brother, a sister and a lost lover,
And then the ship of agony and pain hoists its broad mast,
And the left one, the still and forever paying one, is forced to become an avenger,

Because he/she misses the person to whom these echoes belong,
He/she struggles to deal with the past that haunts him/her in the present,
And to deal with this belligerent self, he/she hums the firebird’s song,
And finally with hatred and lament he/she is pregnant,

And when the feeling is born,
The defeated spirit rises from the ashes,
And begins to sew together the feelings that lie scattered on the ground, mutilated and torn,
With these feelings of hatred and vengeance now his/her spirit gushes,

The silent ground that had been the graveyard of dreams and desires,
Suddenly turns into a war zone once again,
So those who say peace can be brokered are cynical liars,
Because one who is dead can never be brought back again,

And thus the battle between revenge and avenging deaths enters a new phase,
Where the defeated side now fearlessly marches forth,
Because it has nothing to lose now it has no more ghosts to chase,
And thus is born the one who loves romancing the sun, the killer moth,

And it stings all alike, and it flies freely everywhere,
Until both sides accept defeat,
Then they begin to dig graves to bury a hope here, a wish there, and someone’s desire somewhere,
And somewhere lies the lover who his/her beloved could not meet,

And then is born the curse of unfulfilled wishes, desires, hopes and life’s darling affairs,
Now both sides lie in ruin because there is no ground left to bury the dead,
And the sound of echoes keeps growing and the ground turns wet with tears,
It is then the spirit forsakes them all, because genuine valour does not reside in places where courage on death is fed,

And as time grows older there are no more bold men and women left,
Because it is a diabolic ground where only echoes from the past haunt all,
Where all are victims of a different kind of theft,
That of humanity’s actual fall!”
― Javid Ahmad Tak, They Loved in 2075!

“War and ceasefire

There was a war followed by a ceasefire,
Land covered in ash, dead men and women,
Beside the dead were unfulfilled dreams and many a desire,
This is how it is now and this is how it was then,

Because a country defeated in war,
Enters into the state of passive spirit,
To the victor, spirited men and women of the defeated country appear too few and too far,
So, they rush to assume this is it, the end of it!

To be followed by two immediate actions,
Repatriation by the winning side,
And reparation by the losing side while dealing with endless sanctions,
Behind which their broken spirits hide,

But as years pass by and time grows older,
The defeated side realises the losses it suffered,
The men it lost, and the women who fought in ways bolder,
And the living ones, the paying ones, look at their spirits battered,

And they hear echoes from the past,
Few calling a mother, few a father, many a brother, a sister and someone a lost lover,
And then the ship of agony and pain hoists its broad mast,
And the left one, the still and forever paying one, is forced to become an avenger,

Because he/she misses the person to whom these echoes belong,
He/she struggles to deal with the past that haunts him/her in the present,
And to deal with this belligerent self, he/she hums the firebird’s song,
And finally with hatred and lament he/she is pregnant,

Finally when the feeling is born,
The defeated spirit rises from the ashes,
And begins to sew together the feelings that lie scattered on the ground, mutilated and torn,
With these feelings of hatred and vengeance now his/her spirit gushes,

The silent ground that had been the graveyard of dreams and desires,
Suddenly turns into a war zone once again,
So, those who say peace can be brokered are cynical liars,
Because one who is dead can never be brought back again,

And thus the battle between revenge and avenging deaths enters a new phase,
Where the defeated side now fearlessly marches forth,
Because it has nothing to lose and it has no more ghosts to chase,
And thus is born the one who loves romancing the sun, the killer moth,

It stings all, and it flies freely everywhere,
Until both sides accept defeat,
Then they begin to dig graves to bury a hope here, a wish there, and someone’s desire somewhere,
And somewhere lies the lover who his/her beloved could not meet,

And then is born the curse of unfulfilled wishes, desires, hopes and life’s darling affairs,
Now both sides lie in ruin because there is no ground left to bury the dead,
And the sound of echoes keeps getting louder and the ground turns wet with tears,
It is then the spirit forsakes them all, because genuine valour does not reside in places where courage on death is fed,

And as time grows older there are no more bold men and women left,
Because it is a diabolic ground where only echoes from the past haunt all,
Where all are victims of a different kind of theft,
That of humanity’s innocence that actually was the cause of great fall!”
― Javid Ahmad Tak, They Loved in 2075!