Bent completely at the knee and hip, naked, hair tied in a bun, her face buried in wet palms, youth mourns before a plain wooden cross in a bleak, pitted landscape.
No comfort can be found in this age of boys driven to death among those waterlogged craters. And so she weeps into her hands for those lost and those still to be lost- all of her kin, her generation sent to a hell of bullets cracking, shells exploding and mud mixed with blood- acres of it like a million football fields with the players churned into the surface.
No glory can be seen in charging forward with your friends and neighbours into a degrading fight to the death with your European cousins, lungs choking on gas, deflated by hot flying piercings. She wails as she sees and feels this, every casualty scared as the light in their eyes flickers and dies. Their name added to the list, a mason ready to chip it into white stone.
No future is clear for these youths whose youth is sacrificed for a greater good by the old with their old values: two parallel lines of handshakes turned skeletal, running forward to bash together the skulls of the fleshy. Many will see youth mourn above them as worms crawl through their body and those left behind gain the emptiness inside that accompanies the death of a loved one.
In an empty landscape youth mourns, her generation struck down by a very human disease.
No comfort can be found in this age of boys driven to death among those waterlogged craters. And so she weeps into her hands for those lost and those still to be lost- all of her kin, her generation sent to a hell of bullets cracking, shells exploding and mud mixed with blood- acres of it like a million football fields with the players churned into the surface.
No glory can be seen in charging forward with your friends and neighbours into a degrading fight to the death with your European cousins, lungs choking on gas, deflated by hot flying piercings. She wails as she sees and feels this, every casualty scared as the light in their eyes flickers and dies. Their name added to the list, a mason ready to chip it into white stone.
No future is clear for these youths whose youth is sacrificed for a greater good by the old with their old values: two parallel lines of handshakes turned skeletal, running forward to bash together the skulls of the fleshy. Many will see youth mourn above them as worms crawl through their body and those left behind gain the emptiness inside that accompanies the death of a loved one.
In an empty landscape youth mourns, her generation struck down by a very human disease.
Inspired by the painting Youth Mourning by George Clausen. Also here.
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