Why are these people crying for squads of young men drooled
to kill and to be killed,
stood waiting by this train?
Why the orders loud and hoarse,
why the engines groaning,
cough as it strains to drag us off into the hollow cause?
Why the crowds who sing and cry and shout and fling us flowers
and trade their rights for ours to murder and to die?
The dove has torn her wing,
so no more songs of love.
We are not here to sing,
we're here to kill the dove.
Why has this moment come when childhood has to die,
when hope shrinks to a sigh and speech
into a drum?
Why are they pale and still,
young boys trained overnight,
conscripts forced to fight and
dressed in grey to kill?
These rain clouds laughing tight,
this trainload battle-bound,
this moving burial ground, sent
thundering toward the night.
The dove has torn her wing,
so no more songs of love.
We are not here to sing,
we're here to kill the dove.
Why statues towering brave above the last defeat,
bold words of lies repeat across a new-made grave?
And why the same still verse that victory always brought,
these isles of glory bought,
my men with mouths of earth?
Red ash without spark,
west it is used to be,
for guns kill every light and crash it to the dawn.
The dove has torn her wing,
so no
more songs of love.
We are not here to sing,
we're here to kill the dove.
And why your face undone with jagged lines of tears
that gave in those first years all peace I ever won?
Your body in the gloom,
the platform fading back,
your shadow on the track,
a flower on a tomb.
And why these days ahead when I must let you cry
and be prepared to die as if our love were dead?
The dove has torn her wing,
so no more
songs of love.
We are not here to sing,
we're here to kill the dove.