The Sound Of War

How do you know it’s war?
Is it the piercing silence just before?
Or the quiet blow of wind as it runs to the west.
The sky remains blue,
the gods unseeing.
Just mere mortals’ squabbles, right?

There is a split second when time slows,
piercing silence becoming deafening
When hearts still and the ground shakes,
graves in the making.
Hooves split the silence,
Closed doors splinter into the sky,
And blood
Blood seeps into the earth,
fresh sacrifice for hell’s dwellers.
The sky darkens with the soul of men whose screams haven’t quietened,
and the earth breaks and buries her sons.

It’s pain that makes the wind pulse as it moves,
pain that slows time as everything lays flat,
pain as the river sings its bloody self down the mountains,
pain that transforms deafening silence into still calm silence,
as if they never were.
And maybe they never were.