Letter to a Young Soldier

I am sad for you, young soldier,
for your white sneakers
and blue jeans, blond hair.

You turned your eyes
from the war on the TV screen, closed your lids
to avoid seeing the skin, flayed in strips,
the cracked bones, the exploded head.
The body of a bombed baby, stiff like a bundle
of firewood, held by her father
overhead as he shouts in rage and grief,
his tears running into all that blood,
mixing it into dirty rivers.

What will happen when you can no longer
turn your head, close your eyes?
I am sad when I think of what you will create
some day. What you will destroy.
What will create you.
Destroy you.