Helmand

Aris Roussinos

Job, flat, girl pall, yet war
Calls, as from a minaret,
Hanging like dust on the hot wind.

I knew someone who now fights,
His life an easy purity,
Of stars and sand and sun;

Of tracer in the star-shot night,
Warm water gulped from crunkling plastic,
A laugh, before standing to.

War’s beauty’s delicate, he finds,
It snags and tears, as friends in London nod,
Or flinch and ask, and was it bad?

It was, he says, and yet.