Iraq War Grief Daily Witness (photo) Day 136

this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters

cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, and My Left Wing.

image and poem below the fold

Iraqis cry as they sitting (sic) around the coffin of a police colonel killed by suspected insurgents together with his one-year old daughter in Kirkuk, Iraq, Thursday , Oct. 6 2005. Insurgents using suicide and roadside bombs killed at least 21 people, including a U.S. soldier, on Thursday in the latest of a series of attacks aimed at wrecking Iraq’s constitutional referendum next week.
(AP Photo/Yahya Ahmed)

The Soldiers at Lauro
by Spike Milligan

Young are our dead
Like babies they lie
The wombs they blest once
Not healed dry
And yet – too soon
Into each space
A cold earth falls
On colder face.
Quite still they lie
These fresh-cut reeds
Clutched in earth
Like winter seeds
But they will not bloom
When called by spring
To burst with leaf
And blossoming
They sleep on
In silent dust
As crosses rot
And helmets rust.