Not long after I finished The Christmas Mutiny, I met a woman writing poems "to order" at the Saturday Market. I commissioned a poem on the subject of the Christmas Truce, but then didn't see her for several months. I learned later she had been out of town most of the time.
Yesterday, she was at the market again, spotted me and delivered the poem. I like it a lot:
The Christmas Truce, by Cassie Ruud
We will not fight today.
We will not let you order us
into these pukish
mud-blood-soaked trenches
on this day.
You took us from our families,
from the arms of our wives and children
and thrown us against each other
for reasons
we do not understand.
So we will not fight today.
We will stand a tree,
sing our songs,
play soccer out in No-Man's-Land
almost far enough away
to hide from the trench stench
We will pretend our darlings
are close to us, show
each other pocketed lockets
full of pictures,
smoke our pipes in silence and stare numbly into the fire.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Peace on Earth."\\
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