German
1722 – 1791
I loathe with all my heart the first of men who slew
A human fellow-being when the earth was new.
My spirit shrinks from him who for primeval raids
Made sharp the world’s first arrow, honed the first of blades.
For sure that soul rose up from Hades black as sin
That first conceived the thought by murdering to win.
He was by Furies nurtured who with savage lust
First ground gunpowder, first a bullet cast.
He waged his war against all human kind and won,
Oh, he has maimed all Nature with his baneful gun.
He who was first to hone with evil toil the steel
To hold against his brother’s throat with barbarous zeal.
Thou scourge, War, for the world! which the Almighty shook
When in his willful blindness Man the Good forsook;
Masked lunacy, thy foot is rough and weighs like lead,
And where it treads, a sea of blood is shed!
Poets Corner 
As a poet and longtime peace activist, and author of a peace plan, I grok the idea of anger at the thought of war. I wrote this poem in my late teens or early twenties about the possible result of man’s lust for war…
Lay Down Your Arms
by Michael R. Burch
Lay down your arms; come, sleep in the sand.
The battle is over and night is at hand.
Our voyage has ended; there’s nowhere to go …
the earth is a cinder still faintly aglow.
Lay down your pamphlets; let’s bicker no more.
Instead, let us sleep here on this ravaged shore.
The sea is still boiling; the air is wan, thin …
Lay down your pamphlets; now no one will “win.”
Lay down your hymnals; abandon all song.
If God was to save us, He waited too long.
A new world emerges, but this world is through . . .
so lay down your hymnals, or write something new.
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